It starts tomorrow

In case I didn't mention it, the students are not on the ship yet.  They will arrive in the morning, and we will be ready for them, although we've begun to think of the ship as ours, and now we will have to share it. The students are meeting in San Diego where there is a tearful reception for parents going on right now.  They will load onto buses in stages and travel to Ensenada, Mexico to board the ship tomorrow morning.  The work-study students will be on the first buses, and they will assist with the embarkation process. Many of the staff, faculty, and family members will be involved with getting the students settled in and directed to various places.

We had to leave the port for the day to make room for a cruise ship to dock.  We have been cruising around off the shore of Mexico for most of the day.

Our last day of preparation was mostly morning meetings and afternoon individual preparation.  Faculty are getting their computers set up, practicing using the equipment in the classrooms and polishing up their lectures.  The ship environment creates some unique challenges for teaching.  For example, teaching an art history class requires the showing of lots of slides. On a ship, the screen is moving with the ship, the projector is moving with the ship and the images start to be a little fuzzy.

This is all part of today's meeting theme--flexibility.  Each day will require an increased degree of flexibility on the part of everyone.  Things will not always go as planned.  For example, while we were setting up the library today, people kept wanting to use the library materials even thought everything was not in the computer yet.  We found that pen and paper work just fine, and got a lot of good karma as a result.

We also began to "discover" things in the library.  There is a box of rocks (or geological specimens).  One faculty member mentioned that she wished she had brought some rocks to use in her class.. Guess what--we hooked her up with the rocks.  In the spirit of those librarians who have gone before me, I'm jumping in. Yesterday, everyone was wishing they had a map of Ensenada to see some of the geographic features, so we bought a map when we were out last night.  I mounted it in the library, and guess what got looked at the most?

Nancy is volunteering with the setup of the bookstore. It's still in process, but it will be ready, and she feels useful and part of the shipboard community.  She will also serve on the embarking process tomorrow.

To give you an example of the bonding and team building, I'm pretty sure I can name most of the faculty at this point.  We eat together, work together, and before dinner, some of us sang together.  Theresa Pepin, our friend and the asst. librarian is also a concert organist.  She was enlisted to play the piano (one of 3 on the ship), and a bunch of us sang show tunes, Beatles tunes and other rock tunes.  It was amazing at how much sheet music had found its way on the ship in suitcases.  It was a blast.  I feel like I'm working with an amazing team of people.