Emma's Siblings

June 22nd

Yes, I know many of you are campaigning for the “Emma’s a big sister” blog entry, but that’s not happening so get over yourselves. This entry is about two different sets of siblings Emma has gained for the voyage. First, she has four “big sisters” through the ship’s Big Brothers/Big Sisters Program. Alice, Cynthia, Sarah and Lori are fantastic. They all have different majors and interests, but each of them is either a fan of music theatre or mythology and some love both. One of them went to ship school with Emma yesterday morning, made the craft with her and then stayed to have lunch with us. One of them came to see her at the pool today and will be meeting her tomorrow after the morning school session to play board games. The other two stayed and visited for quite some time the night they were introduced. The other four siblings we’ll meet for the first time tonight. There’s an Extended Family program on the ship and we’re meeting ours for dinner after Wade gets out of his meeting with trip and bus leaders for the Spain and Italy trips. With this program, we’ll add four more girls to our family for the voyage. These are just two of the many, many ways SAS works to build community on board the MV Explorer.

Grandma and the Croc of Gibraltar

Each night on the ship they have Explorer Seminars. Different faculty, staff, and interport lecturers present on various topics. On Saturday evening we gathered in the Union to watch Barry Lupin perform. Lupin is a graduate of Barnum and Bailey Clown College who performs in the Big Apple Circus for the first four months of the year and then spends his summer performing at various venues around the globe. When he leaves us in Italy he’ll head to Germany where he’ll spend a good chunk of his time this summer. A couple of days before he’d visited the kids in ship school and showed them how he puts on his makeup. Then he performed a few parts of his act for them. He created the character of Grandma while in Clown College & she’s the only character he’s ever performed. In the big performance in the Union, he involved several from the audience in his act, including our friends Oscar, Jer & Alise. He spent some time in Oscar’s lap, ate popcorn off of Jer’s shaved head, and asked Alise to hula hoop. Her skills were astounding, especially since she’s only six, and I think Lupin was pretty surprised with her hula hooping prowess!

Oops!

Remember that entry I posted about spring forward? I advanced the clock yet again after the Captain’s Dinner last night. This morning when Wade came back from working out I asked him how it was, and he replied “Great!” but had a funny look on his face. “Was it crowded?” I asked. “Nope, I was the only one up there.” “Really?” (normally there’s a group of them who gather at 6:00). “Yep. We didn’t have to change the clocks last night.” So sorry honey. Thanks for being a good sport!

Seasick

Yesterday I had my first bout with seasickness of the whole voyage. We were experiencing some 12 foot swells, so it was not surprising that my stomach was affected. It was a bummer that it came on this day though, as last night (Monday June 21st) Wade and I attended the Captain’s Dinner. First, we met in the Glazer Lounge on the 7th deck for h’our deurves and then made our way to the main dining room where we sat at a table with the Hotel Director, a fantastic German man who now makes his home in Thailand, a couple of Lifelong Learners from Georgia (SAS hosts several senior passengers each voyage and dubs them LLs), a history professor and a surgeon from Oregon, and a teacher from New York who has spent the last several years in New Orleans with the Teach for America program (yes there’s a teachers-at-sea program we’d love to tell our teacher friends more about – just ask!). The company was delightful and the food amazing, but I was unable to eat as much as I’d have liked to do the rolling ship. Still, I’ll recount the menu for the foodies who follow the blog. First course: asparagus and mushroom risotto. Second course: cream of vegetable soup with crab. Third course: traditional Greek Salad. Fourth course: fillet of beef with peppercorn and béarnaise sauce, stuffed baked potato and zucchini. Fifth course: Strawberries in a crème sauce drizzled with powdered sugar and presented with a caramelized cherry in the middle. Emma was a bit insulted that she did not receive an invitation to the dinner, but our friend Valerie and her son Caleb had Emma over to their cabin to play until bedtime. Then she stayed on her own in our cabin for about an hour (she was FINE GranGran) listening to music on her Macbook (Thanks Grandma!). Wade and I ducked out a little early because it was her first time to stay alone. We arrived to discover she’d cleaned up the place for us – what a fantastic kid!

Springing Forward

June 18


Since leaving Ft. Lauderdale one week ago today, we’ve had three nights where our clocks moved forward an hour. Tonight will be the fourth. Emma and I both seem to be a little tired this evening, and I think it’s a combination of all the activity on board and springing forward multiple times. We still have three more hours to advance before we dock in Spain. On a bright note, while we’re certainly feeling the time changes now, we should be very close to regulated upon our arrival in Barcelona, avoiding any jet-lag during our time there. Then, we’ll have very few time changes for the remainder of our voyage and actually will be gaining hours as we journey back toward Norfolk, Virginia in mid-August.

Global Studies

Warning: If you are one of those people who hate it when people blog about how fantastic their kids are, DO NOT read this entry. Global Studies on SAS is the one course all students have on their schedules. All faculty and staff are expected to attend the course as well. Because of the nature of his job, Wade watches Global Studies in the Field Office while working, but Emma and I grabbed a seat in the piano lounge to view today’s lecture. I know you’re thinking, “you watched a lecture on the TV screen in the piano lounge?” Yes, we did. Because there are 740 college students on board, the lecture, which is delivered to a large number of folks in the Union, is piped throughout the ship to various classrooms and Classroom #3 is adjacent to the piano lounge. Emma had to sit in my lap because only one seat was open by the time we got to class (ten minutes early!) All the lectures in Global Studies will deal with history, culture, religion, geography, etc. of the Mediterranean and North Africa. This morning the instructor opened by retelling the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. As he began the story, Emma whispered to me, “Mom, it’s the story of the birth of the Minotaur.” Then, she stayed a sentence or two ahead of him for that myth and the story of Iccarus. Much of what he had to say about ancient Greece she already knew. Then he began to talk about the Crusades, and she didn’t know as much then , but she paid close attention and asked me a couple of questions. Finally, when he discussed the defeat of the Ottomans she whispered, “and then the erected only couches from that point on.” The kid isn’t just smart, she’s also witty! There is a kids’ space during Global Studies where the children can color, etc. instead of listening to the lectures, and we’ve given Emma that option, but for now she wants to go with me to Global Studies. *sigh*

Ship School

Though it’s a summer voyage, ISE still offers “ship school” for the kids. While during the academic year most of the ship school time is devoted to keeping up with the school work the kids are missing back home, the summer school time for kids is an enrichment program. Today (Thursday June 17) was the first official day of the program, though they’ve had some informal activities for the kids since day one. Twice they’ve shown movies in the evening during times when the college students were engaged in other activities. For the first several days those of us traveling with children gathered at the pool each afternoon. Since arriving in Canada, it’s been a bit chilly for the pool, though Emma and a few of her friends did dip their feet in this afternoon for a few minutes. The DCC’s (dependent children coordinators) have arranged some wonderful programming for the kiddos on board. This morning Staff Captain Kostos came and talked to them about his job and about safety on board a moving vessel, and this afternoon the inter-port student from Spain (students travel between ports to help the voyagers learn about the life of college students in the various countries we visit) came and talked to the kids about life in Barcelona. Both speakers took questions from the students. School isn’t just lectures though, they also have craft time, healthy snacks, time for cards and board games, and time on the sport deck to run off some steam. I’m very grateful to Laura and Valerie, the DCC’s. I can’t imagine eight-days at sea without some organized activities for the children.

Photos

For those of you who are wanting pictures (Emma’s grandparents), be patient. I’ll post some in Barcelona. We have over 1,000 people operating on the same network here, and internet bandwith is at a premium. Posting just two photos at the size our camera takes them would take up about 20 percent of my usage for the entire voyage. So, we’ll hit a Starbucks somewhere in Barcelona, and I’ll upload some photos to the blog and let Emma play on Webkinz and Poptropica.

Global Education Forum

June 13, 2010


Greetings from the MV Explorer, which as I type this is sailing near the Canadian coast. We are scheduled to arrive in Halifax, Nova Scotia at 0800 tomorrow (Monday). We boarded the Explorer on Thursday afternoon and since then have been sharing the ship with the Institute for Shipboard Education’s Global Education Forum. This has afforded us the opportunity to hear speakers such as Civil Rights Activist Julian Bond and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Both were fantastic speakers who presented serious subjects with a touch of humor. Bond focused on his time as a Civil Rights Activist, highlighting moments with others such as Dr. Martin Luther King. O’Connor discussed times throughout history when the executive and judicial branches of government were at odds. Each closed with a thirty minute question & answer session and offered photo opportunities at a later time. Bond’s photo op times were, unfortunately, scheduled at the same time as the meeting for parents sailing with children, but Emma and I ate lunch quickly yesterday so we could queue up for a photo opportunity with Sandra Day O’Connor.