Refueling

Refueling

(Written yesterday afternoon…) We arrived this morning just before dawn at Las Palms, in the Canary Islands, for a brief refueling stop, and just as I began writing this we began to depart.  No one has been off the ship: it's in fact the next-to-last day for a lot of courses, with many having exams or last preparations for exams, so folks are busy.  And tired, and emotional ,or getting ready to be emotional, because we are getting near the voyage's end.  There is still much ahead of us, though—one of our most exciting stops, perhaps, in a couple of days (Morocco), then an intense three days before arrival in the UK.  So it behooves us all to summon what energy we have. We are picking up speed just now, the yachts and hotels passing my office window more quickly, and that seems a good image for the state of the voyage.

a little quieter

Maybe I'm just projecting my own little weariness, but it has seemed to me that everyone on board has been a little quieter since we left Cape Town about 48 hours ago.  There would be a number of possible explanations:
1) South Africa offers a collection of intensities like no other port: some have to do with the country's painful racist history; some have to do with the country's painful economic present; some have to do with its astonishing beauty, from Table Mountain to the game reserves; some have to do with various aspects of 'adventure travel.'  I don't think anyone came back to the ship other than exhausted.
2) We are in any case on the home stretch, with everyone having a lot of work to do--in a typical semester we'd be just around Thanksgiving or well past spring break--and everyone recognizing too that we are near the journey's end.
3) Archbishop Tutu left us to go home, taking with him his own splendid laughter but also the billows of applause associated with his every public appearance.
4) On our first night out of Cape Town we had some heavy seas: it's hard to know how much of the subsequent fatigue has to do with the rolling itself, with medications various of us took to mitigate the effects of the rolling, or just with lost sleep as a consequence of the rolling.
5) And today there are of course the somber feelings and thoughts associated with the news from Brussels.  This is, unlikely as it may seem for a cruise ship in the sun on lovely seas, a place where people think.  And nothing is quieter than that.

towards Cape Town

Our time in India made a powerful impression, necessarily, on everyone who visited there—I don't think that's an exaggeration—and our one-day stay in Mauritius introduced most of us to a magnificent place we'd known little about.  We have had since then slightly rougher seas, not too bad but unfortunate in their timing because we've had a couple of new arrivals, and because it's a challenging time for a lot of students academically.

As for the new arrivals: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Prize-winner and genuine hero of our time, has arrived with his wife, Leah.  They will be with us until our next port, Cape Town.  Heads turn towards them in precisely the way I recall seeing heads turn towards Jackie O when I was at an Alvin Ailey performance in New York with a teacher of mine years ago.  Tomorrow is a No Class Day—these appear intermittently on the voyage calendar as breaks and study times—and the Archbishop will make his big public appearance for the voyage tomorrow afternoon in our one large room, The Kaisersaal, which fits all of us passengers at once.  His words are eagerly awaited.  I think I speak for many when I say that I find it deeply moving just to be in his presence.  What might distinguish me is how much relief and pleasure I am deriving from the presence of another new arrival, Professor John Bugbee, who has arrived to take the place of the Religious Studies professor who left us early in the voyage because of a health matter in his family.  I know Professor Bugbee to a brilliant teacher and scholar but share in everyone else's mild pity for his having to integrate himself into a community that has already shared so much.  He'll be wonderful at that, I think.

As for the challenges: We have held yesterday and today the 16^th meeting of each course on board, putting us 2/3 of the way through the voyage's classroom sessions.  Lots of courses have had exams and/or papers due in these last few days.  The exhaustion that comes from ambitious travels in the ports and time at sea does make it hard, sometimes, to rise to the academic occasions.  But the faculty have been deeply impressed by how well and consistently the students on board have so risen.

We zip along, the sea a brilliant blue, with whitecaps frequent.  Madagascar, I'm told, is somewhere nearby, though not, as far as I can tell, in sight: "nearby" is a very relative term in relation to the enormity of the seas.  Tonight the crew will put on its talent show, one of the program's traditions.

(briefly) from India

It's hot here--hot, we're told, even for here.

It's also magnificent, in all kinds of ways.  Before my first Semester at Sea voyage, in Spring 2012, I spoke happily but a little casually about being headed to places I had never expected to see during my lifetime; but by the end of the voyage, I felt I'd been an idiot not to have done all I could previously to visit some of these places, India chief among them.  The future is here, especially in Kerala, the state where our port, Cochin, is: if you don't know of Kerala's astonishing achievements in terms of literacy and life expectancy (especially relative to per capita income), they are worth looking up.  The place is a miracle, not least, in my view, because of the elements of beauty that are interspersed so widely and vividly in a place that has done so much with so little.  A walk today in Ernakulum, the business part of town, found much development since 2012 but many of the same remarkable mixes, all of it too much again for me to fathom.

My family is sticking around Cochin and mostly around the ship, which is largely deserted during: many folks are away on distant trips, others on day trips.  I had mentioned in an earlier entry that those who have an eye on us here but who are far away should not be surprised, and, if possible not too disappointed if you don't hear much from us while we're in ports.  Well, there is so much to take in here, and those processes can be so overwhelming, that I'd especially urge you to patience in the week ahead.  

I hope you'll have been with patient with me too. I am sorry to have been off this for so long.  Myanmar had its own distinctive challenges and absorptions, and for me the stretch between Myanmar and India was especially busy, partly because we had so much faculty, student, and visiting expertise to draw on.  Our two pre-ports were, I'd say, among the most exciting we've had.  I think folks arrived here as ready as they could be, which, because there is so much to India, must necessarily have meant only a very little ready, with ready hardly even the right word for what one could aspire to.

UNan

Yesterday began, more or less, with the ship's undertaking a very impressive U-turn from its berth in Ho Chi Minh City, and then heading out to calm seas, where we are now.  My share of the hundreds of conversations that follow our time in each port has included many enthusiastic, often passionate, responses to Vietnam and Cambodia. 

We have on board for this next leg a Burmese monk and a young man with experience in the country's tourism industry.  Yesterday the began visiting classes and answering questions, and the monk, Van Nendaka, held a fascinating, well-attended question and answer session last night.  Coming as it does nearly at the mid-point of the class schedule—we had nearly a third of our class sessions before we reached Japan—our next port offers opportunities to think about and discuss matters pertaining to the ethics of tourism, some unique to our next port and others common to many of the ports and indeed to much of the world.

But what to call this next port?  I am, you see, using "Burma," as does the voyage home page at semesteratsea.org.  We are in this way consistent with US State Department practice, though one could argue that http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/burma.html fudges it just a little.  UNan, as we call the visiting monk, is insistent that we say "Myanmar."

As long as I am including links, let me suggest http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/25/opinion/ending-the-horror-of-myanmars-abuse-of-muslims.html , which indicates some of the issues that will require ethical questions to be part of our discussion.

My administrative colleagues tell me that some parents worry a little during our times in port when son and daughters become less communicative.  The students are busy on days like today when we're at sea, but these are in some sense normal academic days, and they may allow the quick text or email message, whereas for many, maybe most, days in port can have a very intense pace, driven by the desire to get us much from our short stays as possible.  A parent myself, I don't doubt, let alone deplore, other parents' wish to hear regularly from their children on those days, but neither do I doubt, having met many current students' parents back in San Diego and since, that most would prefer for the times in port to be so full as to make communication back home less common.  The reward for occasional radio silence must be the thrilled reports that follow when students return to the ship.  I hope some come today: Happy Valentine's Day to all.

Vietnam at Tet

 

My apologies for having fallen off here a bit, and my thanks to those who cared enough to call attention to it…Some of you will know of at least one of the two factors that have made my job a bit overwhelming lately: the permanent departure of a faculty member due to a family illness, and our one-day delay in arriving here in Ho Chi Minh City, each of which left me scurrying to find substitutes for essential pieces of the academic program, and at a time that would already have been very busy.  For those of you who care about the outcomes of those details, I can say that the news gets better and better: we have not fixed everything yet, but pieces are being fixed bit by bit and sometimes in ways far better than we could have reasonably hoped for. Some of it is dumb luck, and some of it is very hard work by people in the Field Office both on board and back in Charlottesville and Colorado Springs.

So to recap: Shanghai was brutally cold, and, I think, a challenge for a lot of us, but also thrilling in all kinds of ways; Hong Kong was a relief in terms of weather and mood, perhaps, but posed new challenges because of an inconveniently located berth for the ship, and some unexpected complexities of a kind that are inevitable when so many people engage together in international travel.  Those of us on the administrative team came away from that stay delighted by the behavior of the majority of those on board and disappointed and worried about the behavior of a few, so our logistical pre-port for Vietnam concluded with an unusual session from which we excluded all but a few of the grown-ups, in order to try to communicate in an unimpeded way to the students their responsibility for themselves and each other.  All this happened in the context of that weather-related delay.  A few students, disappointed that the delay would cost them trips they'd eagerly anticipated, wondered whether the calm seas we had between China and Vietnam meant that our waiting a day before heading here had been a mistake; those of you who followed the weather map know that in fact the captain had performed with his accustomed brilliance and found for us calm seas when few were to be had around here.  I sat the other night in the Fritz Lounge with the voyage engineer, who reiterated that the comfort of the passengers comes first.  We benefited from, that, more than most of us could know, these past few days.  This is the way to be safe on the seas.

We have arrived in Vietnam during Tet.  The atmosphere in the city yesterday was as joyful as any I have ever found in an urban setting: it's thrilling.  Our cultural pre-port briefing had benefitted , as had every moment of our trip here, from the presence of a wonderful visitor named Dan Quynh Pham Ngoc, our "inter-port student', who was generous and smart in preparing us, alongside some enrolled Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American students, for what we'd find here; it benefitted too from presentations from three members of our faculty who briefly but profoundly reminded us of or introduced us to (this depends on matters of age) some matters of Vietnamese history that are essential to understanding our voyagers' astonishing experience here.  For we are welcomed here, as warmly as in any place I've ever been.  I couldn't get over it when I was last year on an SAS voyage in Spring 2012; if anything I feel more profoundly affected by it this time.  America's history here would seem to me either to bar me, as American, from coming here, or to sentence me to resentment or worse.  Instead there is some kind of genuine collective embrace.  Why?, I asked the guide on the little trip I took with my family yesterday.  "We cannot have a good day if we don't forgive," she said.

Arriving in Shanghai

I write this as we sail on the river on the way into Shanghai, where we should arrive in 90 minutes or so.  Most reading this will have heard wonderful reports of Japan, where we had cold but wonderfully clear weather, often affording great views of Mt. Fuji.  Last night at our logistical pre-port briefing for our Chinese ports my colleague, Dean John Tymitz, thanked everyone for generally splendid behavior during the days in Japan; there were exceptions, and a couple of complications of the sort that have kept me busy enough to be away from this blog (for which i apologize), but on the whole the students have been doing wonderfully.  Between Japan and China we have had on board a wonderful visitor, Mr. William Duff, a quite distinguished State Department official, who seems to have spent every moment on board engaging with students: Semester at Sea's enduring connection with the State Department seems to me among its most appealing aspects.  We are expecting cold weather again in Shanghai, and a stay to be complicated by new matters, including Google and its associated products not being available to any of us (so you shouldn't expect emails from the usual shipboard accounts) plus Chinese new year celebrations.  But everyone's been well briefed, and you will no doubt have access to other accounts of genuinely thrilling times.

Through the rough part

             Yesterday the Captain got on the PA system--a first in my experience--and described to us the high seas we were soon to face.  He was on again today to tell us we'd soon have past the worst.  It has been rough at times, with jolts forceful enough to send dishes in the dining room to the floor, but life on board has mainly continued uninterrupted.  Seasick folks have had sympathy, and a lot of folks have needed naps.  (It's hard to tell--this is true for me and for others--whether the drowsiness is from the seasickness itself or from the seasickness medicines many of us take.)  The sea has been spectacular to sea, with large waves rolling and big bursts of spray. This afternoon the sun came out and suddenly two of the seabirds--a brown booby and a masked booby, I think--that have been with us at various times this week rejoined us again, as if we'd become fit to travel with again now that we were past the heavy stuff.

               We are two days away from Japan, or will be when we all wake up tomorrow morning (I write this at 9:50 PM local time, though we're setting our clocks back once again tonight), and our longest period at sea for this voyage is soon to be over.  It has gone, in my estimation, wonderfully well: we have very good people on board. And my impression is that the combination of good luck and careful, strategic steering by the Captain and his crew have afforded us a smoother ride than we could reasonably have hoped for.  Tonight John Tyner, the engineering prof on board, gave a wonderful accounting in the big auditorium room of the way the ship works, information that deepens the impression that it is a marvel.  Sometimes more knowledge immerses one in, rather than separating one from, the magical.

                This time at sea has been wonderful.  To look all around one for this long and see nothing but ocean (I have otherwise only seen a few birds and one ship and a couple of stray pieces of detritus) is an astonishing privilege: as the round disk spreads to the horizon it becomes entirely possible to understand how people once thought you could reach an edge and go over.

                But I think we will all be glad to be on land.

Calm sea

            The Hawaii day was for the most part joyful and productive—visits went well, and most of what was supposed to happen by way of getting folks what they lacked and needed came off without a hitch.  The sea was calm for a couple of days afterward, then one rough one yesterday, and calm again today.  Yesterday the ship was joined, more or less, by half a dozen visitors, seabirds that flew alongside and above: by nightfall four were perched upon near the top of the radar equipment, and one was resting on deck.  Boobies, these are called in the books—brown boobies mainly, we think, and perhaps one or two masked boobies.  Their dives, in search of fish, are amazing, as are they flights. The voyage marine biologist gave a splendid presentation last night on what we can be watching for here in the massive Pacific, birds and marine mammals and so on.  Much of it is invisible of course, as below the surface or, as in the case of much of plastic waste we're sailing through, too small to see, though, as she described, its consequences can be awful. 

            We crossed the International Date Line last night, moving thus directly from Friday to Sunday.  Saturday never happened here.  The faculty member whose birthday is on January 16 won't have it this year.  I confess to being perplexed by the whole thing: for years I have taught students about the subjective nature of time, but I still feel tempted to raise an alarm, call a do-over, something.  I awoke on Sunday morning to find that the Saturday NFL games had not yet begun. 

            A week out of Japan we are beginning our preparations: a session on anime in the big room tonight, announcements about filling out forms, etc.  I will meet tonight with the students, faculty, and others who will contribute to the pre-port briefing for Japan.  Once we arrive in Yokohama on the morning of January 24 we enter a dizzying rhythm, with several days in each of three ports separated only by two days of class each.  Our pace across the Pacific feels leisurely today, with no sense that we will by a week from now be beginning a much more rapid pace.

Pulling into Hawaii

As I write this--at around 6:30 AM our time (8:30 AM yours if you live on the west coast of the US, 11:30 AM if you live on the east coast)--the ship has slowed for our arrival in Hawaii.  Lots of people are up on deck--I just popped down from there to write this--to see the big city lights: it is otherwise still pitch dark.  Folks are quiet because of the early hour, but the mood is wonderful, unique to situations in which lots of young people are all anticipating great things, as most of us are, with day trips planned for this brief stop.  It is hard to know exactly how to think about the two brief re-fueling stops on the voyage, here and Mauritius, both magnificent and fascinating places that we probably would not stop at if the ship didn't need fuel.  Two pre-port briefings, on the last two nights, prepared us all for this day, the best and biggest part of the work having been contributed by a group of students from and/or studying in Hawaii.  Trips today range from visits to Pearl Harbor to a climb along a volcanic crater to a two-hour shopping trip at a big department store.  By tonight we'll all be back on headed for Japan.  My own cell phone isn't calling, in spite of lots of signal lines from a US carrier, so if you're a parent and you're not getting a call right away, imagine technical difficulties, though in fact the more likely explanation is that your child is happily caught up in just the sort of collective glee you'd be hoping for during moments like this. I will go back up to the deck now to see that glee just as much as to see the city lights.

The vent of hearing

Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
                       Shakespeare, Henry IV,Part 2


Rumor is my chief source of exercise.  Word gets around quickly on a ship, and if I hear of a falsehood or misapprehension that might circulate quickly and cause distress, I try to track it down and correct it--because the little rumor becomes the big rumor quickly.  Today's was of the minor kind, that a particular person was circulating a petition to address a particular policy.  No running is permitted on the ship, and in truth the swaying of the ship doesn't encourage particularly fast walking.  But I managed to get to where I needed to be at least to determine that the rumor wasn't true.  Whether that will slow the rumor's circulation I can't say.  Shakespeare would suggest that the answer is 'No,' and he is pretty smart about such things.

It's lovely on the sea today.  Classes seem to be running smoothly.  Evening gatherings of various kind have begun, and I can only report on the ones I'm responsible for, since I have to be at them.  Last night we had the music professor board, Mark Brill, lead a sing-along of sea shanties, and that was a lot of fun; tonight is a film about Hawaii followed by a discussion.  Attendance at those events are optional, but attendance at the cultural pre-port briefing, tomorrow night, and the logistical pre-port briefing, the following night, are required: the first will provide some historical and cultural introduction to Hawaii, and the second will go over safety and logistical information pertaining to our arrival the next day.

I suppose one reason why rumor holds so much authority here is that there is so little current news from the outside--no newspapers around in hard copy, few accessible electronically, no electronic media outlets of other kinds, and no Facebook or Instagram or any of the rest.  If you are communicating with someone on board, you might mention a current event or two of possible interest.  For time here has sort of stopped, stuck on the moment we sailed, and sometimes rumors are all we have to move discourse forward.

 

Bird on board

                I worked hard for months prior to this voyage to assemble the best possible faculty, and all indications so far is that they are as good as I had hoped.  They are all accomplished scholars, and a program that half a dozen of them offered last night on safe,sensitive travel demonstrated how much they care about the students' well-being.

                But no matter how good they are, there's no way they--or I-- can match the crew.  All members of the crew—from the captain to the safety specialists to the folks who serve food in the dining halls—are remarkable: the great majority of them have been associated with Semester at Sea over multiple voyages. 

                The excellence of the crew is visible each day in the pristine condition of the corridors, the high quality of food served under challenging circumstances to a large number of people, and the speed and efficiency with which new circumstances are responded to.  This morning the young son of a faculty member pointed out to me an injured bird on a deck just around from the exercise room—a small dark bird, of a kind I saw on shore when we were in Mexico: it's unclear whether it has been a stowaway since we were there or somehow got on more recently here in the middle of the ocean.  The arrival of such a bird is, I know, not an unprecedented circumstance—if you glance my blog from the Spring 2012 SAS voyage you'll find an account of the arrival and handling of a much larger bird—but it still requires some deliberation on the part of the crew, since such things have to be handled in ways consistent with maritime law, ship practice, etc. Still, within minutes four crew members were attending to it.  It looked badly hurt—its attempts to fly set it repeatedly hard against the wall—so I don't know what will become of it or can.

                But the speed and efficiency with which it was attended to models the way we on board are attended to.  We're all out of place here, necessarily, and all a bit vulnerable, except for the crew, who attend to this world with the precision and pride of a master gardener.  On my last voyage a few students, anxious lest winds delay our arrival in a port at which they'd reserved catamarans, approached me and asked me to speed up the boat.  I replied that the one thing that should give them the greatest confidence about the program is the great distance that I, an English professor (after all), am kept from such decisions.  I was making a joke, sort of it, and repeat it in that spirit now, but the truer version would be to say that I needn't ever do anything other than to defer to the brilliant crew on matters pertaining to our safety and comfort on board.

By the way, we all turned our clocks back one hour last night.  One great luxury of sailing in the direction we are as that we'll frequently gain a night's sleep.

First day of classes

 

We are just finishing the first day in school: embarkation was pure cheerfulness and welcomes, and then yesterday was business—students traveling, in their "Seas" (the way they are organized into residential groups on the ship: ask your child what "Sea" he or she is in, and you'll hear "Adriatic," or "Yellow," or "Red," or another) among several different stations and thus learning about various aspects of life in the program.  This meant that my squad and I had to repeat the same pitch half a dozen times, and that students had to listen to a number of such pitches.  But the feeling of the day was terrific.  In the late afternoon the faculty was available for student conferences, and in the evening a few dozen students who wanted to start "clubs" on board made their pitches, after which everyone could sign up for whatever had seemed desirable.  Much hooting and happy hollering.

 

The seas have been rough.  Some students have smiled through it all; others have been very ill.  The ship's doctor has given much reliable advice, and medication is available for free in his clinic.  There is some version of good fortune in everyone's being able to test her or his "sea legs" at the beginning here, but also some version of a daunting challenge.  We will get through it, and we'll get a lot done along the way.