Daily Life and Archbishop Tutu

Hello all,

I want to start off with a special note to Aunt Jane, Shelly, Mama Horst, and Jana for there great emails and cards!!!! Keep them coming they are great to get at sea, while at times it seems as if we are in a surreal bubble that the notes from home bring us back to the things we love and care about.
In regards to last nights posts it is great to see so many of you are already thinking and talking about the issues that were raised. I know that I am not even close to having all the answers, nor I am sure did I get all the facts correct. And just maybe will I grow to enjoy going to completely history sites while on vacation LH J.
I have been asked by some to explain maybe a daily routine and what ship life is like in particular by a friend that I made through cruising. First I must say that this is not a cruise, we have had it told to us time and time again we are on “A Voyage of Discovery”! And that it definetly is, I am not sure if I posted it hear or told my parents in an email after the first week and a half I had even if the ship didn’t go to any ports of call I would have already learned more than I probably would in a semester at school from all of the interesting kids from around the country and the world. To give you an idea of what I am talking about I will name off so schools that are represented here: first and formost Abilene Christian University, Princton, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, Tulane, SMU, almost every major University/State school across the nation. How about countries: USA, Mexico, Peru, Columbia, India, Norway, Sweeden, South Africa, Canada, England, China, Japan, and Venezuela to name a few. So now I bet you can imagine the great diversity that is shared just in the student body. How about the staff and faculty. Starting at the Resident Directors (generally called RA’s at most school) have a minimum of a masters degree, with all professors having a PHD with tons of international experience. My main business professor wrote out 800 page Strategic management book and is originally from London and has lived in Aulstralia for the past 20 something years.
Back to daily life. I know this sounds weird but for the past three weeks and until we return home there has been no concept of days of the week and it is sometimes hard to keep up with even the date (to keep up with birthdates and such) instead there are port days generally 5 in a row and then when on the ship there are A days and B days. Today was a B day which meant that I had Strategic management at 8am then at 9:20am I had global studies (which is the class that brings up port to port issues such as the one I talked about in yesterdays post) then at 10:40 I have conservation Biology (which the professor is the director of the national conservation society of some sort for the hole central US who knows more than anyone would ever want to know about every single species in the world you should of heard the exciting j/k lecture on sand cranes today). Then on A days I have International Business Economic Rise of Asia at 8am then global studies at 9:20 am (which as you can tell by now it is held every day). We are in class almost everyday at sea besides I think three sea days.
Every morning I get up around 7:15am or so to get ready and have breakfast either in the fancy dinning room or in the upstairs bistro which has al fresco dinning (which I did this morning it was a great way to start your day). Breakfast is usually good with almost anything you could ever want besides the Salmon eggs you got to watch out for the Salmon eggs AJ and I learned about that first hand the morning we pulled into Venezuela we were excited and were really paying attention to what we were putting on our plate. Then on A days I usually have a nap before lunch until AJ gets out of class or on B days we are both out by 12. We generally have most meals in the nice restaurant. Lunch is pretty good usually with a salad bar, meat, fish, and pasta with lots of vegetables, soup, chesses and dessert.
Then I try to work out around 3:30 or 4pm in the gym which is in high demand so you have to sign up for a 30 minute time slot the day before. The gym is in the spa where they have all the hair, nail, and massage/aroma therapy you could ever want. I have not yet indulged in this yet but I wouldn’t mind having a massage sometime in the voyage which are all reasonably priced comparable what you would pay in the states. Either before or after my work out I will sit out on Deck by the pool weather permitting and on the other end study or read for class or vis versa. We usually try to eat around 7 or 7:30 so we aren’t hungry late although dinner is from 17:30 to 19:30pm (5:30pm to 7:30pm everything is on military time) and if we get hungry there is a 10pm snack in the upstairs dinning room. Which is a lot like cruise room service food although edible at times it seems like they make it bad so you won’t order it.
Then every night they have what is called community college which is at 8 in three different rooms all on different topics or themes some faculty and some student lead. They are generally pretty good. And then there is always a group of people playing Texas hold Em around 9 or 10 in one of the lounges and other board games. I know I know I really made you work to find out about the alchohol which I am sure some of you are wondering because I know some of you think it is just a booze crusise since there are 683 college students on board. Well for example on this eight night crossing from Brazil to South Africa there there will only be two pub nights (or nights where both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will be sold). On these nights you must go to the pursers desk and stand in line sometimes they get pretty ridiculous and they are only sold for an hour and a half. Draft beer is $2 and other beer and wine is $2.50 with a limit at 4 from 9 to 11 and 2 for the sunset time from 5 to 6. And no alchohol is aloud to be brought on board. So there it is now you know the story.
We are looking forward to tomorrow night because our yellow sea (which there are all kinds of different seas it is a title that helps divide the ship into sections). Anyways we are having a social in the faculty staff lounge which was formally the ships disco and it happens to be our Yellow seas RDs Karens birthday so we all pitched in to order a cake from the kitchen and a card.
I know a bunch of you if you are still reading to this point are wondering about the Archbishop Desmond Tutu well we finally got to go to the meet and greet which turned out to be more of a small Q and A. Where anyone could come up and ask a question to the Archbishop or his wife. They are great and had some amazing perspectives AJ and I got front row seats. I took lots of photos and videos with sound and I will try to post those later in S. Africa if any of you are interested in getting a copy of some of the videos email me and I will try my best to figure that out in South Africa if I can send those over the interenet. Although we weren’t able to get a picture with him, we are going to watch for him on the ship to try and take one with him.
OK I think I have typed as much as I can. I hope I have answered some of your questions and if you have something else you want me to write about let me know. Talk to you all soon and thanks for reading this far.

Chad