400 Nautical Miles West of Galway, Ireland 29 August 2012 I said there’s a lot of water out there. And for the past 4 days, it’s all been just a little upset. The first two days out of Halifax were like the softening up period, especially for the folks who had never been on a ship at sea before. The seas were rolling just enough to let us all know that we weren’t walking around in a Hyatt but not enough to wipe the smiles off the faces of students or faculty busy exploring the nooks and crannies of their home for the next 107 days. Then the North Atlantic started behaving like it’s supposed to. Once we got east of Newfoundland, the swells started picking up, the skies started darkening, and the temperature started dropping. But Monday evening, the seas were steel gray, laced with white tops as far as I could see, covered with the mist created by 50+-mile-an-hour winds, and rolling with what became 15- to 18-foot waves. The ship was rockin’ and rollin’, and many faces were turning green. The large swells seem to travel in pairs or in threes. So we go for 45 seconds to a minute in what is relatively smooth water before being slammed again by the next traveling duo or trio. I can look out my balcony door and watch the bars on the railing swing up and down as each successive wave hits us. It’s a lot like watching the artificial horizon on an aircraft’s attitude indicator, with the horizontal bars of the railing working a lot like the ascent and descent indicators on the aircraft instrument. Based on that movement, I’m guessing we have rocked and rolled as much as 25 degrees in either direction at various times over the past three days. It’s a very large see-saw. We could watch the ship’s course on the in-room TVs, and it was apparent that the captain was trying to make the journey as comfortable as possible. But it’s a big ocean and a small ship. We first veered to the southeast to put the wind at our back as much as possible. That way, the swells weren’t hitting us from the port side but, rather, from behind. In a way, we were surfing down the swells as they first caught us from the stern then pushed the ship forward before sailing off ahead, leaving us in the valley waiting for the next one. It’s a much more comfortable ride than being slammed from the left and rocked 15 to 20 degrees first one way then another. I heard from one of the deans that the captain was actually trying to steer into the center of the low-pressure area that was creating the storm we were caught in. He was heading for the eye of the storm where, like in a hurricane, the water is calmer. Apparently he was successful because late yesterday afternoon, I opened the sliding glass door to the balcony and was almost sucked out by the rush of air from the high pressure inside the ship to the low pressure outside. It is, indeed, a tight ship. As predicted, the water in the eye was somewhat calmer. But eventually we had to move forward to the other side of the storm. Last night was the roughest of the trip so far. Glasses, books, and other accoutrements were sliding around and falling onto the floor, waking me from what was already a light sleep. I stumbled out of bed several times to stash them away in cabinets and cupboards. Worse, though, was the creaking, groaning, and banging of cabinets and doors in the cabin. When a large swell would hit, rocking us back and forth, the closet in my cabin would creak loudly, making a combined scratching and banging sound as if someone were imprisoned and trying to get out. I was hoping the sound was coming from my clothes moving back and forth in drawers and on hangars, but no such luck. It was the closet itself, which, from 10 years of moving back and forth across the waters of the world, has loosened just enough to move and creak when the ship moves and creaks. I have an appeal in to the ship’s engineer, but I don’t have much hope that the problem will be fixed before we reach Ireland. The wine bottle in one of my cabinets was rolling back and forth too. That was easy to fix. The sun is out now, and, while the swells are still in the 6- to 8-foot range, they’re far more manageable. And I have a couple of little-used books wedged between the top of the closet and the cabin ceiling. For the moment, the prisoner in the closet has given up trying for freedom. Class started on Saturday. We’re on an alternating “A” and “B” schedule, with half the classes scheduled on “A” days and half on “B.” I teach one class on “A” days—intercultural communication—and two on “B” days: public speaking and business communication. It’s Wednesday afternoon as I write this, so we just finished class day A3 and will finish B3 tomorrow before arriving in Galway Friday morning. The students seem bright and very engaged, moreso, in fact, than I remember from fall ’09. But that might be because, by the end of that voyage, I had read and graded far too many papers and reviewed far too many exams. My cynicism was high. Now my hope is high that these students will be almost as engaged in the classroom as they are in the sights of the ports we visit. Frankly, there’s little more to do onboard than go to class and study. Maybe this fall’s batch of students is catching on to that more quickly. We’re all looking forward to Galway. We’re looking forward very much to planting our feet on surface that isn’t moving. And I’m wondering if I’ll be able to steady myself long enough to hit a golf ball. I’ll soon see.

South of Newfoundland, Enroute to Galway 25 August ‘12 There’s still lots of water out there. The past six days have been filled with orientation, meeting and greeting faculty and staff, prepping for day one of class, and, yes, a day of golf in Halifax. So I haven’t had time—“taken” the time is more accurate—to keep up with blogging. I’ll try to reduce the past 6 days into capsule form with the promise to be more diligent and detailed in future entries. That, at least, is my good intention. We boarded the MV Explorer last Sunday, 19 August, in Boston Harbor and spent the afternoon unpacking, reorienting to the ship (not “boat,” as I have to keep reminding myself because “boat” is the slang I’ve been using for the past year), and meeting new friends and a few old ones. Truth is, we’re all old on the faculty. I’m writing this in the faculty-staff lounge, a sanctum sanctorum, off limits for students and a wonderfully quiet place to work. The lounge is near the bow of the ship, and it’s encased in a 180-degree glass wall looking out on the waters. I was just distracted by a pod of humpbacks swimming, breaching through the water, occasionally slapping their flukes to stir up krill. Either that or they’re prepping for an upcoming TV commercial. Not much teaching getting done in the port-side classrooms right now. And the Queen Mary 2 just appeared on the port horizon. It’s enroute from Southampton to New York, according to the Cunard website. Back to last Sunday. I was very happy to see my home for the next 106 days: a deck-5 cabin with king-size bed, plenty of storage for my stuff—including golf clubs under the bed—a decent-size bath complete with tub, and, best of all, a small balcony facing starboard. I’ve slept 5 of the past 6 nights with the heavy sliding-glass door open, allowing me to listen to the splash of the water against the bow and alongside the front quarter of the ship. The digs are just fine! On my last Semester-at-Sea (SAS) voyage, I was in a deck-4 cabin, smaller living space, a little less storage, much smaller bathroom, and, of course, no balcony. That cabin was ok. And it had a nice, big porthole looking out at the water. But there’s much to be said for a balcony. The terms “starboard” and “port”—right-hand side and left-hand side of the ship, looking toward the front or “bow”—come from old square-masted days when ships included an extra rudder on the right side to help steer. It was referred to as the “steering board,” which has been slanged down to “star-board” over the centuries. And, because the steering board was on the right side of the ship, the only side that could be tied to the pier in port was the left side. It’s now, simply, the “port.” That was one of the more interesting facts I learned during the first of two long days sitting in the large meeting room called “the union.” The union was where the entertainment happened when the MV Explorer was a cruise ship plying the Mediterranean. Today, it’s the large lecture hall, equipped with essential learning equipment like a lecturn, easels, a large screen for showing slides and videos. But it also retains artifacts from the days of dancing chorus girls, broadway musicals, and stand-up comics. Fortunately, it also retains the lounge furniture, making sitting through the full-day meetings on Monday and Tuesday almost bearable. We arrived Wednesday morning in Halifax, where, following the 2-hour clearing through customs, I left the ship to pick up a few essentials I had forgotten to pack—there’s always something. This time it was wet-weather gear for our 3-day golf tour of Ireland (odds are almost 100% we’ll see rain during any 3-day stay in Ireland), a few pharmaceutical items, and, most important, a couple liters of wine for the Halifax-to-Ireland crossing. We’re allowed to bring onboard up to two liters of alcohol in each port, and few of the faculty and staff fail to meet their quota. Even though the passage from Boston to Halifax had been very smooth, it was still nice to feel solid ground under foot, and the Halifax weather was perfect, so walking around was a good way to spend the day. Halifax has the feel of a seaside town: narrow streets in the older part of the city where we docked, buildings dating back to the late 19th century and earlier, steep hills climbing from the harbor to an old citadel that used to guard the city, and, of course, the smell of sea air. But it also contains a few tall glass buildings, and a modern highway bridge connecting the downtown with suburbs to the north. The city sits inside a U-shaped harbor that opens east into the Atlantic. And on days like the two we had in Halifax, the scene is beautiful: green, heavily treed hills sloping down into the very blue waters. Wednesday evening, I was back onboard to greet parents of the students who would board the next day. After the meet-and-greet, I went to a very good Halifax restaurant for dinner with Jim Cooper, my golf partner and retired dean of UVA’s school of education; Shamim Sasson, Jim’s wife and onboard registrar; and Laine Hanson, a field-trip coordinator from SAS’s Charlottesville headquarters. Laine would be disembarking in Halifax and returning to Virginia. Thursday morning, Jim and I escaped the ship at 08:00 just as the first students climbed the gangway loaded with duffels and backpacks. For the next 4 hours, as students signed on, found their cabins, wandered the ship, and started making new friends, Jim and I played a Donald-Ross-designed golf course named Brookside Golf and Country Club, built on the hills of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, overlooking the waters of Halifax Harbour. The weather was perfect and the golf was fun. As always, the course won. We sailed from Halifax Thursday afternoon at 17:00 (ship’s time, 5pm for civilians). Yesterday was class prep time for me as the students went through a compressed version of the 2-day orientation that had filled my time from Boston to Halifax. And today, it all began: day one of classes. There is, as I expected, a distinct air of familiarity about being back on board the MV Explorer. Many of the same faces who were with us in ’09 are back again, especially among the lifelong learners, a group of adults and a few children who pay for passage and for the experience of sharing a relatively small ship with 475 students, 35 faculty, a staff of another 40 or so, and a 185-member crew. So, in some ways, it’s as if the past three years didn’t happen. At the same time, it’s all new. The students are new, the curriculum is new, most of he faculty are new, and, of course, a few of the ports are new. Plus, I know many new experiences are out there waiting for me. So I feel back in the groove and happy to be on board with many who I’m sure I’ll one day call close friends. Six days to Galway. Meanwhile, there’s still lots of water out there. And it’s still very blue.

Onboard United #578 Enroute to Boston 18 August 2012 "Are you excited?" I've heard that question countless times over the past several weeks as my day of departure--tomorrow--has moved closer and closer. "Not really" has been my usual answer. Jaded? I suppose a little, though I think I know the reason: I've been there before. Three years ago, the prospect of boarding a ship, sailing around the world, teaching college classes again: all these represented a launch into the unknown. I'd been onboard a cruise ship before, but this one, the MV Explorer, is different. It's a luxury liner converted into a floating university: the old casino is now the library; the showroom that once hosted singers and orchestras is now the union; the lounges and private dining rooms are now classrooms. Exploring this boat ("It's not a 'boat,' it's a ship!"), living and teaching in a moving combination dormitory and teaching space, was an exciting and a little unnerving prospect. Three years ago, I had already traveled to many of the countries we'd be visiting, but never on a ship, never while taking my temporary home with me. And arriving via Cape Town harbor, or watching Singapore go by as we cruised through the Strait of Malacca, or sailing up the Saigon River: these were experiences that I had been imagining since I was first accepted into the Semester at Sea faculty. The coming departure date was to me like Christmas to an 8-year-old. And three years ago, it had been over two decades since I'd last stepped into a college classroom to teach. By departure day, I had honed lesson plans for three communication courses and, like those engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab who have been working on the Curiosity lander for the past umpteen years, I was ready to see if the 69 lesson plans I'd invented would land successfully or would tumble into an ocean abyss, taking the lesson objectives and my self-esteem with them. This time, I know the ship well, having spent 110, plus or minus, days onboard just three years ago. For a big boat, it can feel very small when you've been sailing between two ports for almost 2 weeks, as we did between Japan and Hawaii in '09. This time, we'll have a similar crossing between Cape Town and Buenos Aires and only slightly less time between Ghana and South Africa. The boat doesn't hold quite the same romance in my imagination that it did in August '09. This time, I'll be traveling to many of the same countries we visited in '09, though I am looking forward very much to seeing and doing things--Fes in Morocco, the slave castles of Ghana, the Stellenbosch region of South Africa--that I missed on the last voyage. And I'm looking forward to arriving in Montevideo, up the River Plata, where the German battleship Graf Spee scuttled at the end of one of the great sea chases of WWII. Sailing up the Amazon into the heart of the Brazilian rain forest, docking in Rio, golfing in Ireland--what more is there to say?! Finally, this time I'm much more confident that the lessons won't sink. Most worked last time, and those that didn't have been fixed, or so I hope. I still have a few holes to fill, and I'm using a couple of new, untested (at least by me) texts, so there's a touch of the new-school-year trepidation, but only a touch. And I know what to expect in the students. To that end, I've re-read several times the final blog from my '09 trip. I think I know better how to tailor the classes to meet the diverse abilities of the students. I know much better how to recognize the students who see the voyage as a genuine learning experience and those who are onboard for a 1-semester boondoggle and binge. And I know better how to communicate with kids who are 25 years younger than the last batch of US Air Force cadets I taught during my final year at the Academy. It's a different environment; this is a far different generation. So, sure, I'm excited, but it's a different kind of excitement than I felt when I boarded the Explorer in Norfolk. I know what to expect and what not to expect. I'm older. Jaded? No, not really. There's still a little of that 8-year-old waiting for Christmas. Maybe today I'm more like 12.