Day 2. We Have a New President!

Yes, I saw it. We all did.

At 1100, the ship used its bandwith to connect to C-SPAN live and the entire shipboard community paused to watch the swearing in of the new president. Sitting among my new shipboard family, from all walks of life and generations, the moment was perfect. The ship erupted in applause and watched in awe at the peaceful transfer of power that happened before us. It doesn’t have to be said that that transfer isn’t a given; and to many of the countries I’m going to on this voyage, it doesn’t exist at all. I think we all realized that today. Our exec. Dean also made a great point: Our children will ask us where we were when Obama was sworn in. We’ll be able to say we paused and watched it from a ship circling the globe in the mid-atlantic! Unbelievable.

Today was long, and tough. We hit some rough(er) seas around the time the Inauguration began (I hope it’s just a coincidence), and it has been trying since. The ship pitches and rolls like crazy sending you flying into walls or railings or, mostly, other people. We laugh it off and smile, and use the opportunity to introduce ourselves again.

Everyone is so great. I have meet a lot of friends, and tons more names and faces that have yet to be committed to memory.

We spent the day in all types of orientation meetings; from procedures in port to safety and health at sea led by the captain himself. One of the toughest things, that I never expected, is staying awake for all of this. Imagine slowly being rocked to sleep- at all times. Yeah, it’s like that. You want to listen, but your body, tired and weak from the travel and new adrenaline takes its cues from the ships and drifts off. I find myself staring out at the water that’s flying by and just daydreaming a lot. Then I hear the captain say something like: “… and that would kill you…” and I hone back in.

After dinner we had an inaugural party. It was impromptu, the admin decided on it yesterday. Just goes to show you though, the ship’s crew is AMAZING- they decorated, baked cakes with American flags, and poured 1,000 glasses of champagne for the community to toast with. They are insanely hard workers, I’m in awe.

Before heading to bed, we played some cards on the top deck. I came back to my cabin and got ready for CLASSES tomorrow! Tomorrow is an A-DAY (the ship splits its academic days into A and B, days of the week don’t exist). I have Biomedical Ethics at 0800, Global Studies at 0920, and ‘Media as Message, Massage, Mirage’ at 1645. I’ll be sure to fill you in on all of those courses.

Tonight clocks go forward one hour, and my synchronization with the East coast ends. See ya on the flip side in May.

Talk tomorrow

Greg