At Sea!

Hello from the middle of the Atlantic!

I’m currently writing from the MV Explorer as we travel east towards Cadiz, Spain. We’ve traveled about a thousand nautical miles since Nova Scotia and have another 1,700 or so to go before we reach our next destination.

The closest point of land is a mere 455 nautical miles away—we are absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Yesterday I saw the first sign of life other than us as a cargo ship passed in the distance. Let me tell you, it was a huge deal. We were in the middle of class when someone spotted it and everyone immediately got up and ran to the windows and starred at it as if we were five year old kids who’d never seen a ship before.

With that said, it’s an awesome experience to live aboard a ship. [We are often corrected for calling the ship a “boat” because this offends the captain and crew—they command a grand ship not just a little boat.] We’re lucky enough to be on a huge 25,000 ton ship that was built only eight years ago specifically for the Semester at Sea program. It has seven decks complete with two luxurious dining halls, a library, a computer lab, ten classrooms, a basketball court, a gym, a spa, a pool, a bar, a “campus” store, and other great facilities.

Though all the common areas in the ship are extremely nice I can’t say our cabins are as high class. My roommate and I joke that our room is a closet they converted to living quarters. We’re on the inside without a window so when you wake up it’s impossible to know whether it is 5:00 in the morning or noon. Still, it’s really not awful—we have our own bathroom and everything we really need. I guess that’s just the price you pay for living aboard a traveling vessel.

Even though we have everything you’d need at a normal college campus it’s impossible to forget that we live aboard a ship. The most shocking part of the experience for me thus far is how much the ship sways back and forth. The seas are relatively calm and the MV Explorer is pretty large but there’s never a time when you can’t feel the movement. I can’t really describe feeling but you feel as if you’re going to tip over in your chair yet your glass of water doesn’t slide from the table. It can be quite entertaining to watch groups of people walking down the hallway as they simultaneously move from side to side and sometimes collide with walls.

Our ship is home to almost 900 people. There are about 550 students from all over the US, around 40 professors, another 15 or so staff, the families of the faculty and staff, 30 or 40 “life-long-learners” [who are mostly retired people interested in learning and helping us to learn so they pay to join our voyage], and about 200 crew members. It’s great getting to interact with the professors’ young children and the friendly and wise life-long-learners who sit in on our classes and eat with us. The crew are also great. They are truly from all over the world: the UK, China, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Mexico, the Caribbean, and many many more places. [Our Captain is British--I always imagine that our ship would be on fire or sinking and we'd still hear his calm, clear British accent over the loud speaker. Before I met him I thought that all of the announcements were recordings.] Every day our beds are made, our rooms cleaned, our food served to us, and our plates are cleared by the friendly and seeming very happy crew. Life is good.

Really everyone I've encountered thus far has been awesome. All of the students are extremely friendly, outgoing people. The first night I flew into Canada I ran into other SAS students at the airport (it was pretty clear which kids were students as there aren’t many people that regularly fly into in the little city of Halifax). Immediately we were all talking and a few Dartmouth kids let me crash with them in their hotel so I didn’t have to look around for a place to stay at midnight. The next morning I was outside of the hotel waiting for a cab when a family from Geneseo, NY spotted me with my two huge duffel bags on wheels and offered to give me a ride to the ship since they were taking their daughter there as well. This open kindness amongst people is so common onboard. The life-long-learners really want to get to know students, as I said before crew are always cheery, the professors and their families are extremely glad to be here (it’s actually harder for a professor to get accepted to the program than it is for students), and obviously all of the students are stoked on traveling around the world with five hundred kids their age. As we sit out on the back dock watching the sunset and chatting we can’t help but occasionally throw in “I can’t believe we’re here right now.” It really is the coolest trip—we’re all so excited to be here even though for the time being “here” is precisely in the middle of nowhere.

There’s so much to tell you all about this extremely new experience for me but so much I need to get to (yes, somehow they keep us busy even though we’re isolated to a single environment in the middle of the open ocean). I’ll be sure to write again soon when I get a chance and when I have some more new and exciting things to tell you all about.

Thanks for following!

svc