At Sea to HawaiiApril 15 to April 21, 2008

April 15, 2008

Goodbye Japan and hello open Ocean of the Pacific.Yes, that is right, we are now coming to an end of our voyage and have many days at sea.Our first big leg of sea is this stretch from Japan to Hawaii, which is from April 15 to April 21.Japan was a great place to visit and many students are still talking about their home stays with families, the baseball games they saw, the Atomic Bomb museums and stories they heard, the experiences on the bullet trains and the lovely stories of eating Japanese food.The students are so great about experimenting with the cultures, exploring the world and teaching themselves a lot of great new skills for their future.

Today, the community also found out about the 4 students who we left in Japan.Yep, that is right, 4 of them.Three students lost their passports.Over and over we tell them, when you have to carry your passports, which is very seldom, you must take care of it like it is GOLD and make sure you carry it on our person, hidden on your body somewhere.I guess out of 750 students, only having three of them loose their passports is good, but not good for them.You see, they cannot come on the ship last night to clear immigration and customs, so they have to stay in Japan to meet with the US consulate office and the Japanese immigration office to get new passports.The tricky part about this point of the voyage is we are at sea for 8 days and that means 8 days of classes to be missed.If you miss these 8 days of classes, especially now at the end you would fail out of school.So the bad news is that students cannot come back to the program.Our other student was left in Japan due to some medical reasons and it was best for her and the community to be in the care of the Japanese hospitals and health care.

The rest of the day was just a day of getting back to ship life and really getting ready to be at sea for majority of the last few weeks of the voyage.For most of the night I have been working on one of my projects with is the raffling programs we do to raise money for our charities at the end of the voyage.This week, I am conducint a raffle for $1 a ticket to be the winner for the first person off the ship in Miami on May 9.Also, two other RD's and myself are working on finalizing our auction for April 17, which is one of our biggest events on the sip to help raise money for the charities as well.We have collected many great items and services from the students, faculty, staff and crew to auction off to the ship community.Everything is coming along great for this big event.

April 15, 2008

Not a typo.. It is April 15, 2008, part two.Last night we crossed the International Date Line.Since we are moving east and have been losing sleep and increasing our hours of time throughout the voyage, it is now time for us to get back some time… so we got back an entire DAY!!Yesterday we were 13 hours ahead of NY and now we are 11 hours behind NY.It is pretty strange feeling to repeat the entire day and then reposition our clocks to now be behind the USA, since the entire voyage we have been ahead of you.

Today, we also experienced some unexpected swells in the ocean, out of nowhere.During dinner, we hit one or two waves that sent most of the dining room flying around.The poor dishes on the buffet line all fell and broke, students fell out of their chairs, food was flying around on people.It was pretty humorous for us.There were no major storms or major waves out there, but the crew had said that we were in the process of changing directions to get head more south to position ourselves for Hawaii and probably hit a swell or two from the course direction against the swells we were normally going at for so long.The rest of the night was a bit choppy and bouncy, but nothing major at all.Just added for a nice rocking motion to sleep, which felt good!

The auction committee met today and we continued to finalize our preps for the auction.We are getting close to the auction date and just have been getting things organized, organized and organized for this great event.

April 16, 2008

Nothing much today.. just your general day of ship life.A few of us just finished the final touches on the auction.I went to attend of the kids birthday parties on the ship tonight.Our RD's daughter, who is sailing with us turned 5 and they had a party for her.Ice Cream Cake, chips and cookies… ummy.. we don't get to eat those items on too many occasions any more.

Otherwise, the students are just chillen and hanging around finalizing a lot of group projects, final papers and mentally preparing for finals and the trek home.There are some mixed feelings about the voyage coming to an end.But sooner or later, it will be here.

I think I am ready for everything toend.I have loved this job, this experience and everything I have learned has really made me a better person, but it is going to be nice soon to be able to drive somewhere, to see different people rather than the 700 people on the ship.Oh well, it will be here soon… but then comes the time to find my job and get my new life situated and set up!!

April 17, 2008

Auction DAY!!After waking up pretty late today, since the night was going to be pretty long, it was time to get the auction ready and started.From 2 - 7 p.m. we had a silent auction in our main lobby area.Many paintings, clothing items, food items and some other great donations were all set up for a silent auction.The students had a lot of fun going around bidding on the items they wanted and played really nice with each other.During the day, I continued to sell my raffle tickets for first off the ship and still had a great response from the students to purchase tickets for this raffle.I had one student purchase $70 tickets, as they were only a $1 each.All proceeds go to the charities!!

At 8 pm, the live portion of our auction began!!The auctioneers started with their first item, the navigational chart that is posted in the lobby that has the tracking positions of the ship every day!!Starting bid from the auctioneer was $50 and the games begun.Right after the $50 opening bid, the students raised it $200 and the crowd of students got hyper and we knew we were going to be in for a treat.The bids kept on rising and rising and one student walked away with the navigational charts for $650!!Unbelievable!!Yes, the proceeds go to charity, but WOW.. where do these students get their jobs and allowances from!!

The night went on and we had 45 items in the live auction… items ranging from vacation spots at some faculty's homes for a week, to blowing the ship's horn when we arrive in Miami, to raising the USA flag in Miami, to paintings and services.

All night long the students kept on raising the bids higher and higher to reach $1,000's and high hundreds, it was just crazy to be a part of this experience.By the end of the night, the tally came along.For our silent auction, we made about $2,500 and for the live auction, we made approximately $20,000, on top of me making $1,000 from the first off the ship raffle.All of the money we raise will go towards 4 charities the students have picked.It is great to see the generosity of the students and their families to give money to a great cause.

April 18, 2008

No CLASS Day!!After a long start to hit Hawaii, we all needed a day off today.I finally got up around NOON and just relaxed.Today we had a BBQ on our 7th deck pool area to celebrate a nice day outside and our day off!!Today, I just did some job searching and prepared for one of my interviews upon my arrival home in the USA.Later in the afternoon, I just cleaned up some of my cabin and started throw away a lot of the paperwork I have accumulated from my work.I am getting ready to start packing my souvenirs to bring with me in Hawaii to try to find a place there to ship them home to NJ now, instead of having to worry about it in Miami!!

Tonight,I had a floor meeting with my residents.Yeah, a day off, but these are the best days to get these meetings scheduled.My two student sea captains are working with me to get the residents signed up for the Alumni Association, and having the meeting worked out to get them the information they needed to sign up.The voyage is coming to an end real soon and a lot of end of the year work is beginning to be coming our way!!

Tonight, the students also put on a fashion show.A bunch of the students got together to put on all of their great outfits and clothing from all over the world to share with everyone.They did a fabulous job on their top model event!!

April 19, 2008

TIRED and sleepy.. that is the mood on the ship.We constantly have been loosing one hour of sleep each night since April 15 (part two) trying to get back in line with the USA time zones.Today, we are only 6 hours behind NY and we are getting there.

Everyone is finally realizing how important sleep, exercise and staying well rested is.With the rocking of the ship and how tired we are, we get very sleepy during the day.Others have realized that when it is time to sleep at night, we don't sleep.Our bodies are totally switching patterns and everyone is finally feeling it.

Just another day at sea, nothing major… just meetings and events to keep everyone busy and on top of their work.Tonight I went to see a play that was put on by 10 of our students.They did a great job on learning their lines, costumes and humor, just in that short amount of time to get it completed.I am so impressed with the talents of our students and how they really get togther to make events happen for the shipboard community.My new big lesson that I have learned when RA's and other staff members tell me that can't do a program due to limited resources… that is bull s***… look at what we have done with programming and events at SEA with no resources, no shopping and making do to what we have.My new staff members are going to be in for a treat when I start working again!!

April 20, 2008

Hawaii is getting close and you can feel it in the air.The weather outside is getting warmer, we are seeing birds next to the ship and we have not feel off the map yep, so the world is really round!!Everyone is really tired today, worse than yesterday.People could not sleep last night, including myself and were up for most of the night.This is the first time that there has been a line at breakfast since people were just up at 8AM and earlier.They are dragging pretty bad today, but we will make it.With the excitement of Hawaii just around the corner, the energy levels will pick up real fast and make everyone start moving again.Tonight we had our cultural pre-port event, learning about Hawaii.It is fun to be back in the USA and to reenter for the first time, since 4 months ago.We get to use our dollar, get to speak our language and get to be off the ship!!!

April 21, 2008

Finals preps for Hawaii!!!But the bad news.Right after our meeting a student found out that her father had died.We have had so many students experience some personal family crisis this past semester.She is going to leave the voyage tomorrow from Hawaii and be with her family.Life goes on…….Nothing else to report today.. besides the excitement to get off the ship and to hit Hawaii for our short visit.