What an exciting day it has been. This morning (which feels like last year) we continued with orientation from 8:30-11am then we all had to check out of the hotel and bring our luggage down to the conference room. Geno and I dropped off our luggage and headed to the mall for some additional supplies and then came back to the hotel, had our lunch and had a great Facetime conversation with my Dad for Father's Day!!! Love you Dad. Geno tried to Skype call his dad too but couldn't get in touch but WE LOVE YOU JACK!!!

After lunch we wheeled our luggage from the hotel to the port which was about 300 yards. They put all of our luggage through an inspection and then we handed in our passports and received our ship id card. This card swipes you on and off the ship as well is serves as your "money" on the ship. You swipe it at the snack bar, spa, etc. After we embarked we gradually had our bags delivered to our cabins but we didn't really get to unpack because we had an IT/AV session to attend. During this session we attempted to setup our shipboard email, internet, intranet, and access the public and academic folders….holy cow! This was so confusing I thought I was going to go insane but eventually 2.5 hours later and with a boat load of collaboration we finished it and we were set up. Seriously, it was a nightmare…wish I were smarter!

There are 7 decks on the ship and ours is on the 4th floor. We are in cabin 4089 which is in the middle of the ship. There is a little less motion in the middle so that is wonderful. We have plenty of storage space and a very nice big square window. We came back to our cabin and unpacked frantically from 5:30-6:10 and then had to make ourselves go eat dinner so that we could meet parents at the parent reception that were coming aboard at 6:30. Geno and I gave tours to the parents and told them all about the program. It was so much fun to know a little bit more about the program this time and to be able to ease the parents minds.

After that we headed to the Glazer Lounge. This is the faculty lounge which has plenty of seating and during the day it is a quiet space where we work and at 5pm it turns into a social scene. We had such a great time getting to know more of the faculty and spouses and having some time to have more in depth conversations with them.

Tomorrow the students embark. We are ready to get started, bring it on!