The Three Musketeers

My travelling companions are Reggie Garrett, my significant other, and Jackson Garrett, his grandson from Eagle, Colorado. Jackson has come loaded with textbooks and I believe Reggie has loaded him down even more. There will be no slacking under his tutelage and my role will be resident Mom and study hall proctor. And maybe I will relearn some Algebra. Ha Ha!

Beginning at 0900, we will start loading 730 students from 250 institutions of higher learning primarily in the US, but also Canada and other countries. There are at least 23 students from UVA, the highest number ever and it puts us in 3rd place as the most represented university on this voyage. I attribute that to the efforts of Reggie and others to raise the level of awareness at UVA of this international studies program. While this is an expensive endeavor on the part of the parents, at least 45% of the students boarding today, will have some sort of financial assistance. We also have a large contingent of work study students.
This is the 98th consecutive voyage of the Semester at Sea (SAS) program and the 3rd ship. SAS now owns this ship which is considered one of the best cruise ships sailing the seas. Having now seen plenty of large cruise ships since arriving last week, I consider the Explorer the trimmest of vessels, and built for speed.

The SAS program is designed to be a living learning community of students, lifelong learners, faculty, staff and dependent children. It is not unlike Thomas Jefferson’s plan for the Academical Village which was the original way the University of Virginia was organized around teaching and learning on The Lawn. That is one reason why SAS wanted to have UVA as its academic sponsor. Who would have thought that one day the idea would be embodied in a shipboard community. I am so lucky to be a part of this endeavor.

My office is the Textbook Center. With the help of some able bodied volunteers, I have now gotten the books unpacked, counted and shelved with only a few problems. It is a very different operation than my usual job in OSP and I am struggling with a small learning curve as I try to figure out the hierarchy of go to people, new email system and MS Office 2007 which I have learned to hate. In a week the worst of it will be over as we will have closed drop/add and I can move on to selling sweatshirts in the Campus Store and supervising Jackson.
We have a nine day Atlantic crossing, arriving in Cadiz, Spain on my mother’s birthday. By then we should all have our sea legs and the students will be immersed in their studies. As Reggie has said,"I have been waiting all my life to sail across the ocean". It is the beginning of an amazing adventure.

January 26, 2009-A technical note...The ship has limited band width and it has been a challenge working with photos. It may not be possible to upload any photos onto another site unless I do it between 3-7AM while the students are sleeping. I will keep trying.