Have you ever been invited to a dinner with the Captain of your ship and Archbishop Desmond Tutu? Well, we have!! It is 11:45pm, or 23:45 ship time, and we just returned from our "Captain's Dinner." It was so much fun! Every faculty, staff, and lifelong learner has an opportunity to attend a Captain's Dinner during the voyage and we were invited to the very first one. No "cafeteria" food for us tonight! A cocktail hour began at 7:30pm, in the ...

This morning we passed Santa Maria which is part of the nine islands that make up the Azores. Yesterday, we passed Pico and several other islands but they were so far away that we could barely see their outline on the horizon. The official language of the Azores is Portuguese and their currency is the Euro. The island chain has a population of about 245,000. It was so nice to see some land after traveling for 5 days and seeing nothing but ocean. The water near t...

We haven't written in a few days because of the internet situation and the fact that we have been super busy with the start of classes. On the ship we have "A" days and "B" days, and now we have completed a cycle of both days. We have taught one session of each of our courses and now the students have a chance to drop/add. We had some pretty rough seas after we left Halifax, but now we are almost half way to Spain and we are ahead of the sto...

It was a good day at sea today; we have had very little rocking compared to the trip up to Halifax. There is not much to say about today because we were in student orientation ALL DAY! I know the students are saturated and I am sure that the faculty and staff feel even more so. I think we are all ready to begin our classes; we will teach for 6 days and then we will arrive in Spain!! The highlight of the day was our first encounter as a group with Archbishop Desm...

Today 607 students boarded the ship. It was controlled chaos as the students and parents tried to drag huge bags and suitcases through the security check. There are 4 students who have not had their luggage delivered yet, but we think it may be in someone else's cabin by mistake. Today we worked out in the ship's gym since it was docked and still for a change, then we showered up and headed to the Citadel. We climbed up a beautiful grassy hill to get there. We d...