"Closing Time"

For those of you that sailed with me in Fall 2000 you will love this. The official last song of Summer 2007 is “Closing Time”. Now I should probably preface this with saying that this song does not resonate with the students, but rather the staff and faculty as it's the last song we play after our staff/faculty parties. I should also let you know that I’m writing this at 2:30am after our second of (hopefully) many pre-port after parties in the Faculty Staff Lounge.

For those of you who have not sailed on Semester at Sea I may have to explain this a little. Like I’ve mentioned time and time again there are not standard working hours on Semester at Sea…except the night before we enter a port. This night is known as “pre-port”. This is because we have a meeting with the entire shipboard community the night before we enter a port and explain the logistics of the port and any other pertinent information that people may need to know. This is also a night where alcohol is not served to the students. The main point in explaining this is to say that none of the faculty or staff has any responsibilities after the pre-port meeting. It’s fair to say this is our favorite night of each crossing. When I sailed in Fall 2000 we had what we loving called “Pre-port Tipsy”. This meant we went into someone’s cabin, served up cocktails and watched “pre-port” from the cabin. This time around we are not broadcasting “pre-port” on the TVs so we have resulted to “Pre-port after parties”.

These events consist of the younger staff and faculty (20, 30 and d 40 somethings) and a very good time. We usually head up to Staffulty around 10:45 or so and turn the music on and have a full-on dance party. People take turns DJing and a good time is had by all. This tradition (I guess that’s what you call it after two pre-ports) started spontaneous before Acapulco when a group of us went up to Staffulty as it was closing. A few people stuck behind and there you have it. I must admit, tonight was totally premeditated and pre-planned as Tom (our Asst. Dean) ordered mini-burgers, spinach quiches and scallops wrapped in bacon for the after party. The word was spread only by mouth and those who knew what they were getting themselves into showed up with all the enthusiasm in the world. If I had a dollar for every time someone said they never wanted to go home or they were having the time of their life I would probably not need to go back to work in August. Okay, so reality is, I’d probably feed myself for a day or two with that money but none the less, it was an amazing time. I can hardly wait for pre-port Ecuador.

(insert 3 1/2 hours of sleep here)

We arrived in Panama this morning and it was a spectacular sight. The sky was covered with one giant dark rain cloud and there was a rim of light just at the horizon. It was pouring rain with lightening getting closer and closer to the ship. Out of the cloud cover the city skyline appeared without any warning. It was one of the coolest moments I can remember. It looked exactly like a Batman movie. The other very cool thing was all of the ships anchored waiting for their turn to transit the Panama Canal. It was like a life size Battleship game. Unfortunately, due to the bad weather and fierce rain that was dropping no one got pictures of this scene. It will just be something I’ll keep in my head.

At this moment the overwhelming verdict is to get off the ship and stay off the ship. We are not docked at a pier but rather anchored off the coast, which means we must tender to the pier. This process is time consuming and can really throw your plan off if not timed exactly right. This morning has already proven to be quite a challenge. The ship was rocking so severely that we could not get anyone into the tender boats. We ended up with a handful of people in them and the gangway was crashing against the tender boat so hard they had to postpone all further embarkation. Finally, after about 20 minutes they ended up taking the small group of people in the tender to the shore and have been working on stabilizing the ship a bit more. Given the plans we already made ahead of time for Sat-Mon and this morning’s experience with the tendering process, I have made the executive decision that I’m leaving the ship and not coming back until Monday. It just makes life so much easier.

Nate’s flight lands today at 1pm and we’re meeting at the terminal. We’ll have to tender back to get him checked in and drop his things off so hopefully the tendering process will be a bit smoother. I’m sure he’ll be tired since he’s flown all night but his dad gave us the name of a wonderful resort that is sounding GREAT right about now. On Saturday we’re heading with some friends to the Caribbean side of Panama for some R&R at the beach. Let’s see if we can get some of this cloud cover and rain to go away. We’ll be back with a full report after the weekend so hold tight for more adventures to come.

Panama is in sight

The past two days have been great. I know, I’m starting to sound like a broken record. Okay, I’ll back up. It hasn’t all been great but the vast majority of my time the past 48 hours has reminded me why I needed this time away from home.

After a long day of judicial meetings on Monday, I found myself with some free time on Tuesday. These are the moments you have to snatch up before someone grabs you to go do something else work related. I took myself up to Deck 7 and pulled out a lounge chair. Deck 7 is where everyone goes to lie out in the sun and relax. Now, let me clarify, I was not on Deck 7 Aft, which is the very top back part of the ship where the Coppertone girls sun themselves. I was on Deck 7 port side where the smart people go to relax and enjoy themselves. I’m not saying the those on Deck 7 aft aren’t having fun, I’m just saying if I hungout back there during the day I’d be thinking about how I’m not 21 anymore. So I’ve found my nice corner of the ship and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. So back to my story. I pulled out my lounge chair and the wind was whipping about something fierce. I could hardly get my clothes off without them going overboard. I had to strategically get my towel down and somehow place my clothes in a secure location so they would not be lost forever. I know, life is rough. After what felt like a short little nap in the breezy paradise of Deck 7 port side (for those of you who do not know ship lingo, port side if the left side of the ship and starboard side is the right side…easy way to remember this, port has four letters as does left) I took a look at my watch and realized I had been out there for two hours and I was almost late for my pedicure. Yes, I know how ridiculous this is sounding but bear with me, I’ve been working 18 hour days and venturing in the hot Mexican sun for the past week. I went for my pedicure and before I knew it the day was winding up and the night was beginning.

I finally went back to work last night around 5pm and worked until about midnight. That’s the weird thing about Semester at Sea. The work never stops and there’s no distance between your “house” and your “office” so it seems weird to get up in the morning, work a few hours, take the rest of the afternoon off and then go back to work for what would normally be a full day. Bizarre.

I was on duty last night, which entails hanging out on Deck 7 when the alcohol service is going on. This is actually a lot of fun because you can chat with students and get to know people a little bit more. There are definitely those students who are making themselves known in a good way and those who are making themselves known in a not so good way. I try not to let the latter get me down. I did have a couple of interactions last night that really annoyed me at first but in retrospect I can laugh about. When students do something to break the code of conduct they are sanctioned in ways that sometimes restrict them from the AFTer Hours events. I restricted a student from the event last night and he came up anyway. After approaching him I learned that he didn’t read the sanctioning letter and had no idea he could not be up there. When I told him he’d have to leave he replied with, “But then what do you want me to do”. It was all I had to actually answer him with a straight face. Was he serious? I could think of a million things he could do but all I could get out of my mouth was, “why don’t you go do your homework?”. He looked at me like I was insane. Later I relayed this story to another staff member who had some pretty choice answers to this question. I guess if I was thinking fast enough I could have come up with something wittier. Next time.

Finally, by the end of the night I went to bed feeling disillusioned. There were students complaining that they actually had school work to do and that this was not the booze cruise they had signed up for, students complaining that they were not being served hard alcohol, student complaining about other students. Oh, the complaints kept coming. Thankfully, I had a number of students renew my faith in 20-somethings today. Please people, in the words of my good friend, Pete, “Your life is a constant struggle, you’re going around the world”. I know that phrase doesn’t apply to this voyage since we’re not going around the world, but I have decided I really do need to come up with my repetitive response to these ridiculous complaints. For my colleagues back in the states, the entitlement issues do not go away when you leave dry land. If anything, they get worse.

Today was another day full of work and last minute preparations for my sea social. Each sea (group of approx 50-75 students) gets to have a social up in the faculty staff lounge. My social was tonight. So I printed invitations, reminded everyone about it and made a bunch of name tags for the students. Sure enough at 9pm they all started to pour into the lounge for their night of hobnobbing with the faculty and staff. It was actually a really great event. Everyone came dressed up and a number of the faculty and staff stayed in attendance for over an hour. It was a great success. It also gave me some face to face time with the students who I had yet to meet. It’s difficult to get names and faces when 500 people board a ship all at once. Keeping everyone straight is a challenge, especially since 1/3 of them look a like.

We arrive in Panama on Friday and we’ve been trying to figure out what the heck we’re going to do. We were thinking about heading to a beach area on the Caribbean side but we can’t seem to get our group together. Everyone has side trips we’re trying to schedule around and the flights don’t work well for everyone. There are three of us (this includes Nate) that would really like to go and can actually make it for two nights but we were hoping others could also come with us. We are making our final decision tomorrow and sticking with it. More to come on this adventure, which I’m sure will provide some more good stories.

The latest good news for those blog readers out there, Nate is boarding on Friday in Panama and may have the new responsibility of being our blog contributor. That is if I can get him off Deck 7 long enough. I’m sure it won’t take long for him to hit vacation mode!

Life is good!

I am currently sitting in my cabin watching the Devil Wears Prada after a day full of rocking seas and judicial meetings. It’s amazing how doing anything on Semester at Sea seems wonderful to me. Okay, so the judicial meetings don’t sound like that much fun but it does give me a chance to get to know students I wouldn’t otherwise meet on the ship and we are finally getting into a routine that seems normal. That first week was a killer. All the orientation meetings and only one day of class before we hit Acapulco was a bit much.

Our last day in Acapulco was wonderful. Dawn (the Asst Academic Dean) and her partner, Tim, organized a trip to a beach & lagoon north of Acapulco in Pie de la Cuesta. This place was heaven to me. It was a virtually empty beach with a great restaurant that had a thatched roof overhang and hammocks. I love a good hammock. The waves were enormous and it was totally peaceful there. Had I found this place on Thursday I may not have come back to the ship until the last minute. I’ve decided the next time I see a cheap flight to Acapulco and I can sneak away I will hop on it and take the first mode of transportation to Pie de la Cuesta that I can find.

On our way home we went by the former estate of Diego Rivera where he constructed one of the most amazing mosaic murals I’ve ever seen. There was a lot of historical significance to it, but I’ll have to get that information from our resident art historian on board and get back to you on it. It was stunning though and I’m so glad we decided to swing by.

We had our last meal in Acapulco and headed back to the ship to monitor the gangway during on-ship time. Luckily, we had everyone on board in time and no one received dock time for being late. Dock time is like being grounded. If you’re late to the ship you must return early in the next port by an exponential amount of time. We were quite pleased that everyone made it back. It certainly makes my life easier.

I’m beginning my research on Panama and can’t wait to be there. I love the time on the ship with everyone but I’ve been counting down the days until Nate gets here. Panama may be a difficult port as we’ll be tendering (taking small boats) from the ship while it’s out at anchorage off the coast and that complicates things a bit. It makes running back to the ship for a quick minute difficult. We’ll have to plan our days out well so we can get off the ship and stay like that for a while. A few of us are talking about heading to the Caribbean side for a night or two. We’ll have to see what pans out.

Roaming the streets of Acapulco

As I mentioned, Acapulco was a surprising port for me and I’ve really enjoyed being stationed here in Old Acapulco vs. the tourist trap that is the other side of the bay. With this said, three days would have been just fine. I was on duty last night but didn’t get called for anything so I had a great night sleep and woke this morning excited about that. Oh, how quickly things can change. I received a phone call letting me know we had an incident with a student that another staff member dealt with so I followed up on that as soon as I could and was getting ready to depart the ship with friends when we were intercepted because a student was causing problems at the gangway. Finally, after addressing that we made our way off the ship a little after 11am.

Today I spent the day meandering around the city with friends. We headed over to Fuerte de San Diego. It was really cool. It’s an old fort that was built to protect the bay many many years ago. Unfortunately, you will not get a history lesson from this blog, but I would encourage any of you out there interested in history to look it up. They have turned it into a museum with a number of artifacts that were very interesting. I’m usually a quick museum person but it was boiling hot out and the buildings had air conditioning so we read every board and looked at every artifact. After the Fort we went to grab lunch and came back to the ship for a quick nap. This evening Doug and Mario and I headed out to go wherever our feet took us. This included an outdoor vendor market, a shopping mall, a Starbucks, a trek down the “hotel zone” and we ended at a beach-front restaurant for dinner. All in all, a very good (but hot) day.

Because I don’t feel I’m doing enough cultural stuff at the moment to intrigue you I figured I will tell you a little about my life aboard the MV Explorer. I boarded two weeks ago, which is hard to believe. Part of me feels like I’ve been here a month and the other part feels like it’s only been a few days. After moving four times and settling into my nice new cabin (which I failed to mention is a mini-suite with a small couch and table next to the bed) and getting the hang of what this job will entail I tried to set up a routine as best I could. This can be difficult as every days brings new challenges and curve balls. I think a typical day at sea (if there is such a thing) will look like this:
8:00am – wake up and have breakfast
9:20 – 10:35 – Latin America Today (this is a class that the entire shipboard community takes together)
11-12:30 – Student Life staff meeting
12:30 – lunch
1pm-5:30pm – judicial meetings with students (let’s hope I’m not so booked up that I don’t have time for an hour on the deck or a quick workout every so often.
6-7pm-ish – dinner
7-9pm – either student meetings, shipboard community events or free time
9-11pm – either on duty for AFTer Hours (this is the alcohol service provided to the students. It’s called AFTer Hours because it is held on the Aft of the ship) or this will be free time or extra hours to catch up on work.
Midnight or so – lights out.

The ship, which I haven’t talked much about, is ridiculously nice. It’s amazing how quickly this becomes the norm. Having sailed on the older ship in Fall 2000, I am thankful every time I take a hot shower (I didn’t have hot water for some crazy reason in my cabin during the last voyage), every time I go to workout (there’s exercise equipment and mats available on board) and each time I walk into the Faculty/Staff lounge, which is by far the coolest room on the ship. Oh, and let’s not forget the overindulgent luxury of the day spa on board. No joke, massages, facials, pedicures, the whole works. Fortunately, for my wallet the massages are about half the price of massages back home. Whew! I feel completely spoiled. Yes, I will admit that I have already had a massage and have booked a few more throughout the voyage.

As wonderful as this opportunity is, it is more stressful than one would imagine. There are so many systems to set in place and each voyage must reinvent the wheel and get a routine going. It can also be difficult when students are excited or just plain don’t care and are not necessarily following the policy set out. Admittedly, the policies are a bit more strict than on a land-based campus, but hello, there are anywhere between 300-700 college students floating out in the middle of the ocean. I’d say that’s called for.

There are some major events on board that I will undoubtedly write about in the future. We have Neptune’s Day, which is celebrated when we pass the equator. This is a maritime ceremony that pays homage to the Gods of the sea. It turns Pollywogs (people who have never crossed the equator) into Shellbacks (those who have). Tradition states that one shaves their head when this happens and although not mandatory on Semester at Sea, it is something that happens in very high numbers each semester. I already know of a few women who are planning to shave their heads. Given the huge dent in the back of my head, I have once again decided the hair is staying. Nate will be here for this big event so he will officially be a Shellback when he returns to the States. Lucky for me, those of us that have gone through it before will assist the crew with the festivities.

Another big event is the Sea Olympics. Each hallway of students is divided into a “sea” (my students are the Arabian Sea) and they compete against each other in traditional (basketball, tug of war, etc) and not-so-traditional (egg toss, mashed potato sculpting contests) events during a full day at sea. It’s a lot of fun. I coordinated this event last time I sailed, so I’m very much looking forward to participating this year. Everyone comes out dressed in their sea’s designated color (mine is orange) and it’s a great time. I’m already preparing as I picked up an orange cowboy hat at the grocery store the other day. I’m sure the pictures will be worth a thousand words.

We also have a shipboard talent show, a crew talent show, the Ambassador’s Ball (the SAS prom, if you will) and the Students of Service Auction. It’s hard to imagine how all of this is going to take place in 28 days at sea…oh, and don’t forget the students still have classes to tend to. It will certainly be a whirlwind summer.

As I prepare for my last day in Acapulco (about 10 staff members are going to a lagoon just outside of town for the day), I am very aware that work will be at my heels come 9pm tomorrow night and Panama is in sight. I can hardly wait for Nate to show up in Panama next Friday so he can meet all of the wonderful people I have been hanging out with and he can begin to experience this obsession of mine called Semester at Sea.

I hope all is well with you and I will be posting photos soon. I’m going to borrow a number of pictures from other people since my camera has not been performing it’s best. Actually, there are some amazing pictures of the cliff divers that you’ll love to see. Hopefully, I can get those pictures posted soon.

Much love to all,
Anne

Acapulco...more than I ever imagined it to be!

I'm currently sitting in the Student Life Office after two full days at port. I'm on-duty tonight so I had to be back on the ship by 10pm and I'm trying to take advantage of my time on-board to get some work done and also to catch up on life (paying bills, doing travel research and updated the blog). To my devoted fans (that's you Rico and Ro) who are going through withdrawals, I am back. I hope to be better at staying on top of this thing, but as you know, time flies around here. Unfortunately, I'm not sitting at a desk all day long so before I know it it's midnight and I'm going to bed.

We arrived in Acapulco on Thursday morning. It was a hard morning to get up because we had moved our clocks ahead one hour two nights in a row. That is a killer when you're working all day and night. We also had an impromptu dance party in the Faculty/Staff lounge (from here on out referred to as Staffulty) which went until after 1am. A few of us had gathered to celebrate Mario's upcoming birthday (it is officially today - more on that later) and went up to Staffulty to see if anyone else was still around (the bar up there closes at 11pm and it was about 11:15pm). Sure enough there were a few people left and we all just starting hanging out and chatting. Before we knew it, the music was going, people were dancing and a crowd of students had gathered outside the window. I have determined after 10 years of working with college students that it freaks them out to learn that we administrators/faculty actually like to have fun too. The looks on their faces were priceless. Anyway, that is all just to explain how bad we were all dragging the morning we arrived in Acapulco. There was hardly anyone on the deck as we pulled in, which is totally different than my previous experience on SAS. The decks were packed before the sun came up as we arrived in each port. Maybe we just have a lot less students, but it seemed almost like a ghost town relatively speaking.

We headed off the ship with no particular plans and it seemed most of us were not super excited for Acapulco. Low and behold, Acapulco is great. Luckily, we are docked in a non-tourist part of town so we have quick access to the Mercado Central and other Old Acapulco destinations. Mario (an RD), Doug (another RD), Rasa (Admin Asst) and I took off by foot to explore a bit. We made our way to the Central Market and had a blast. We walked all around and stopped for lunch (5 tacos for $1.50...can't beat that), we then headed to a thatched hut on the beach to enjoy a cold beer (IT WAS HOT) and rest a bit. On our way back we decided to go into the super market and pick up some water and other snacks. I love grocery stores in foreign countries. It was fun just to walk up and down the aisles looking at the local food. We dropped our groceries off at the ship and continued on foot the other direction. We were running into students left and right and learned a little bit about what everyone was up to. Many of them spent the day at a nearby island that you can reach by a ferry. It sounded like a lot of fun but apparently over 100 of our students were there the first day. Yikes. Thursday night we ventured out for dinner with a larger group and sat out under the stars telling stories and laughing a lot. It was a very fun day. We returned to the ship at midnight and decided to go sing Happy Birthday to Mario who had already returned because he was on-duty. After our serenade we all went to bed! I slept like a baby.

This morning we work up and six of us (Mario, Doug, Rasa, Tania and Karen - one of the spanish language teachers) headed out to the nearby island we had heard so much about. I'm sorry, I can't remember the name right now. We hopped on the ferry thinking it would only take us a short trip to get there. Ha, were we wrong. Apparently, the ferry tours you all around and shows you famous people's houses, there's a cliff diving show and lucky us, they stop at vendor boats en route. Oh my god! I thought we were going to die. It was a 90 minute ferry ride, which should have only taken 15 minutes or so. It was so bad that at one point as we sat stopped in the water just off the beach so people could come on board and sell us food and other chachkies Rasa lost all patience with the ferry ride and dove into the water to swim to shore. You had to be there, but it was fantastic. I could not stop laughing. I thought if they waited much longer the rest of us might just follow her lead. Finally, we made it to the island and hung around the beach for a couple of hours.


Upon returning to the ship we showered and headed out for Mario's 29th birthday. We first went to see the famous Acapulco cliff divers. This was amazing. These men climb up the side of a cliff (no joke) and dive off into 12 feet of water. It is so dicey they sometimes have to wait for long periods of time to gauge the tide just right. I thought I was going to throw up the first two dives. My hands stopped sweating finally until the end when the last diver went off from the very top. I can't even imagine. It was sunset so the pictures that were taken were amazing. I don't have any of these pictures to post because my camera broke two days ago. Yep, bad timing, huh? No fear, Nate will be joining me in Panama next Friday and is coming to the rescue with a new camera. Phew.

When the cliff diving show was over 13 of us headed out to dinner for the final birthday celebration (having your b-day take place in a port on SAS is a very fun thing) and it was shaping up to be a great night out. I, unfortunately, can not report the rest of the evening because I hopped in a cab with my boss, Lisa, at 10pm to return to the ship since both of us are on duty tonight. I'm sure the rest of the group (pretty much the attendees at the dance party two nights ago) are having a great time as I type.

We have two more days of exciting adventures in Mexico, however, I have no idea what we'll end up doing for our remaining time. So far, playing it by ear has worked very well. More adventures to come...

(Thanks to Mario for providing a couple of pictures to include in my blog)

A slight delay in blog entries

Hi everyone,
My apologies for being delayed in posting messages. Unfortunately, the internet was down on the ship and now I'm a few days behind. Here's an update from June 18th...

June 18, 2007
The past couple days have been exciting and exhausting. It seems there’s never a minute to just sit and collect myself. The students arrived in Ensenada yesterday and check-in went really well. We, thankfully, did not have many problems with illegal items (anything with a non auto-shutoff heating element, drugs, alcohol, etc), which has left me with some time the next two days to create a system of working the judicial cases that come up. I probably won’t talk much about work on my blog as most of it’s confidential and frankly, there’s going to be so many other cool things going on that I’ll have plenty else to write about.

Last night was filled with meetings where the Executive Dean and Academic Dean introduced the voyage and set the tone. I thought it went really well. We also had meetings with the students to go over the boring rule stuff. It seemed everyone was pretty tired so the night ended early (if you’re talking student time) and most everyone was in bed by 1am. I am adjusting to SAS time, as I like to call it. First, the schedule is in military time and secondly (and most significantly), I have been working until well after midnight for the past few days. Most of you know I’m an early to bed person so it will take me a few days to adjust and then I think I’ll be okay. The good news is that I’ve been sleeping in until 7:45am each morning so at least I’m getting close to 7 hours of sleep. The other good news, my commute is AWESOME! The schedule will start to regulate soon and I’ll be able to find a routine. That’s the hardest part of the first week.

Currently, there are two technicians on board wiring the ship with cellular service so the ship will be it’s own roaming zone. Technology continues to amazing me. All US based phones will work on the ship, however, there will be a hefty international roaming charge when calls are placed. There was an announcement today that while they are testing the system that any call made would not incur a roaming charge but would just charge against your plan as regular minutes. Many people were skeptical about this but I decided to take my chances and call home. I was able to talk to Nate and also to wish my dad a belated Father’s Day. It’s pretty amazing how clear the connection was for being out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no land in sight. The biggest problem I found was the noise the ship was making where I made the calls. Although I am one that wasn’t a fan of email and/or phone service being available on board, I have sure taken advantage of it.

We’ll be in Acapulco on Thursday and as of now I don’t have anything planned. I did this on purpose because we weren’t exactly sure what everyone’s plans were and we figured we would need to be a little flexible with our duty schedule. It will surely be a “party port” so someone from the Student Life staff will be scheduled to be on the ship from 10pm to 8am each night in port to deal with any emergencies that come in. There is also someone from the Admin Team (Deans, Asst Deans, Director of Student Life) on call each night in port so we should have it covered. My fingers are crossed that we won’t have any problems!

I'm still here, just really busy...moving again!

So for those of you keeping track, I've sailed on two Semester at Sea voyages and just logged cabin move number 10! Six during Fall 2000 (there was a little ship accident involved in that number) and four this summer...so far. I'm thinking this is it. There was a problem with ventilation in my cabin so the smoke from the smokers deck was somehow making it's way through the floor into my room. Weird. Anyway, they were able to find me a new cabin, which I love. It is bigger and it's not stinky at all! Both very good things.

The students arrive tomorrow and things have been pretty much non-stop around here. Most of you know I'm not a night person. I still have hours of work to do tonight and I'm thinking it may just have to be an early morning instead. I am sorry I don't have much of an update for you right now but once things settle down a bit I will write more. As always, the faculty and staff on board are wonderful and I'm just excited to meet our students now. There are a couple that have made themselves known on a Facebook page and were adivising other students how to smuggle alcohol on the ship so I have a sneaking suspicion they will be keeping this Judicial Officer on her toes. I'm up for it.

I hope all is well and a very Happy Father's Day to you dad! I tried to call you today and all attempts failed...pay phone, cell phone and a ship to shore call. Today just wasn't my day to talk to anyone.

Love to you all,
Anne

Moving in and moving up!

I have been planning for this adventure for a while, picking places I want to visit, slowly accumulating things that I would be packing, paying bills ahead of time and finally getting myself out the door, but it wasn’t until I pulled up to SFO to pick up Melissa (good friend from my Fall 2000 voyage and full time employee with Semester at Sea) that it hit me. There stood Melissa in a t-shirt that said Semester at Sea in giant letters. I was leaving. It was time.

Melissa and I drove to Pier 70 in San Francisco to board the ship while it was in dry dock. Let’s just say Pier 70 isn’t your typical San Francisco pier. This was a very large ship-yard and lucky us, the MV Explorer was parked at the very end of the yard. I was able to board the ship early in San Francisco and planned to sail down to San Diego with a few of the ISE (Institute for Shipboard Education – the organization that runs Semester at Sea) staff so I decided to take my things on the Friday before we left SF. Melissa and I lugged all of my belongings from the street to the dry dock. This was comedy. First of all, I’ll just describe what we were wearing and you can probably picture the rest. I was in jeans and a sweater while Melissa more appropriately had on a t-shirt and WHITE pants. There we are two women pulling duffle bags and suitcases full of stuff during our 10 minute walk through the ship yard only to arrive to three, yes I said three, flights of stairs. Oh and these stairs were the straight up type. We laughed when we really felt like crying from the pain in our arms and finally made it to the ship. Whew…only to be asked to take a picture for my shipboard card, which I will use every day on the ship to get into my room, get off the ship and buy things on board. At first I was a little worried about how this might turn out given I was sweating like crazy and was trying to catch my breath. In the end, I’m glad it was taken that afternoon because now every time I use my card I will think how lucky I was to have Melissa with me that day.

Saturday brought two events aboard the MV Explorer, which was now docked at Pier 35 and much more centrally located. Nate and I boarded the ship prior to the first event and learned they would be conducting upgrades to the fresh water pipes in the room I had temporarily stored my belongings in. So move #2 began. I was, however, moving up in the world…temporarily. On the ship there are 12 luxury suites on Deck 7. I was assigned to 7003 and thus began my life in luxury for a few days. Nate and I moved my things to 7003 and by this point everything was in complete disarray. Because Melissa and I couldn’t lift some of the bags up the three flights of stairs as they were packed, I dumped the contents of two bags out in the room and redistributed the rest of the stuff left in the car for easier transporting. Nate spent the first 15 minutes on the ship trying to move my things up two decks. What a trouper. Finally we got everything settled and we both spend the day working the Open House and Alumni Event which lasted from noon to 9pm.


The events were a huge success and it was time to say good-bye. I had a moment of weakness and got a little sad but that was quickly remedied with a glass of wine in the Staff/Faculty Lounge and the most beautiful night one could ask for to sail under the Golden Gate Bridge. There was not a cloud in sight and the lights of the city could be seen long after we pulled away from Pier 35. A few of us stood huddled together on the top most deck as we sailed under the Bridge and quickly returned back inside as the wind was something fierce.

I returned to Cabin 7003 and woke up to a perfect day aboard our private yacht, as we called it all day Sunday. Besides the crew, there were only 8 of us on board and we had full run of the place. We napped, we played poker, we watched a movie on the big screen, we worked out in the gym and we ate. It was GREAT!

We arrived in San Diego on Monday morning and a few more staff boarded (the rest of the faculty and staff will board on Wednesday). After breakfast I learned that my summer cabin was ready for me so I packed up my things and moved back downstairs. The luxury was nice while it lasted but it was good to get into my cabin and actually unpack everything. So here I sit in Cabin 4133 with my clothes in the closet, my map on the wall and my pictures hung. In no time at all this place will be bustling with people and the quite private yacht will be a sailing university. I can’t wait!

SAS Summer 07!

This is the MV Explorer, where I will be living for the next 2 1/2 months. Nate will be joining me from June 29th - July 28th.