Biological clock

I missed posting yesterday--mostly because I was totally pooped.  I'm now in the faculty/staff lounge of the ship, and I've got it all to myself.  That's because it is 5:30 am local time as I started this.  However, it's 9:30 am back in Virginia. We passed through a time zone during the night, but my body didn't know it.  I'm usually a 6:30 riser, and I've been at least one hour ahead of that all trip.  I do go to bed on the local time, so I'm getting about 6 hours of sleep each night.  Nancy has an amazing capacity to sleep almost any time, so she's not too affected.  The good news is that most of the students will be unaware and will be early for classes today.

I also have to really think about it or look at a calendar to see what day of the week it is. I'm pretty sure it is Wednesday in most places.  However, the class schedule on the ship does not go by days of the week.  There are no Monday classes, no Tuesday classes, etc.  Instead, classes are A days and B days.  So, you might have an anthropology class that meets on A days and a drawing class that meets on B days.  There are no weekends while on the ship, so classes just keep meeting everyday as long as the ship is at sea. Then, when we are in port, there are no classes, but if we are there Mon-Wed, the classes start back up on the A/B schedule.  If we did it on the day of the week arrangement, the faculty who taught on Mon and Wed would have missed some class time.  The A/B system works well.

Just to confuse things a little more, the library computer is set to GMT (formerly know as Greenwich MeridianTime).  We are now at GMT + 6, so send me an email if you can explain how that works.  For us, if we set the hours of the library in the system as being open from 8am- 11pm, the computer reaches a time around 5pm when it thinks the library is closed and tells you that you can go ahead and check the book out, but it will be due the next day.  You can imagine how well that works with 2 hour reserve checkouts.  It's another opportunity for us to be flexible.

Tuesday was the first day of classes or Day A1. The students all had at least one class yesterday.  We could tell in the library because they were all looking for classrooms ,and many of them needed directions.  The library has a big dry-erase board, and it was perfect for a quickly made direction sign.

OMG, an albatross just flew across the front of the ship and dove into the water.  I just learned from a newcomer to the lounge that they breed in the atolls and then are at sea much of the rest of their lives.It is a Laysan albatross. He's checking out the wake from the ship for food.  Very Cool. Now I'm happy that my biological clock got me up early.

We changed course yesterday to sail around a storm, so we're taking about a 300 mile detour south.  We're still getting huge swells, so I can only imagine what it would be like nearer the storm.  During dinner last night, pitchers of water were sliding off the tables, my soup attempted to bypass my mouth and go directly to my .stomach (externally) and Nancy's chair slid back and forth as she ate.  People were making amazing saves of items/food sliding around.  One of the waiters got a round of applause when he caught the silverware tray before it hit the floor. To give you another idea of the magnitude of the rocking motion, imagine that you are lying in your bed.  Now imagine that it tips enough that you slide to the foot, and then moments later, you slide back to the headboard.  That was our night.

Thersa and I started training our new student assistants.  We have 10 work-study students who get a nice tuition remission for working in the library.  They have already completely gone through the shelves and made sure each book was in its proper place, They are a great group from all over the world, and I learned 10 new student names yesterday.

Now people are up and around and getting their coffee and rembering that the time has changed.  Day B1 has begun