Life At Sea

This is our fourth day at sea and we seem to be settling into a rhythm. Classes have started, recreational activities have begun, movies are shown often, and we continue to eat all of the time. I go to the gym most mornings at 6:00 am and then for coffee at 6:45. I’m usually showered and ready for breakfast just after 7:00. It’s a great time on the ship with sunrises and quiet time. Not many students up at this time, including Davis who has been sleeping in most days. Davis has begun his English course and is making good progress. He continues to connect with various staff and students. Today he will attend a video workshop.

My classes – between 3 and 14 students, great diversity, mostly motivated students. I teach two on “blue” days (Managing Cultural Diversity in Business & Tourism and Hospitality Management) and one on “green” days (Human Geography). We still have limited resources (e.g. paper, photocopying, printers and of course internet). Most of us are using power-point as the six classrooms have projectors. Students and staff remain flexible as we get through the first couple of sessions. It does make me appreciate all of the academic support systems we have in NA. It also forces us to be a bit creative in the classroom.

We are off the coast of Sardinia and Tunisia. Today we had the coast guard come and pick up a student who had some sort of illness. He will have it looked at in Sardinia and he will meet up with us in Lisbon.

Tomorrow we prepare for the academic field programs in Lisbon. I will be accompanying students who are in the International Business Learning Circle. More on that later. . .

-Ken

My life has been pretty laid back on the ship so far. I am pretty tight with the video team, Josh, Ed, and Erik; they are like brothers to me on the ship. I help them out a lot. One of the students is the ‘designated photographer’ and her name is Emma. She is a surf instructor from O.C. California. She has an XTi, the same camera I have! She is super cool. I have started school, and I can tell I will be done it all on time. I just have to get a schedule going so I can stay consistent with my work. My plan is to finish all of my school work, and then help out with the video team and get school credit for that. If that happens, that can count as my elective and I can have a spare block when I get home for the 2^nd semester. That allows me to finish my homework, help out with yearbook photos, and sleep in or go home early. That would be so awesome. Internet is so limited here, so keeping up with you guys will be a struggle. It is 17$ an hour! I now can never take unlimited internet for granted ever again in my life. When I get home, I am planning to get a job and start my career. Dad said he would help me get a business license. That allows me to sell my photos legally. I also want to get a domain name, preferably davishammer.com. It is only 8$ a year. I finished my website, but it is hosted on shaw.ca.

Check it out. Give me feedback. I want to get a job so I can start making money. With money, I can buy camera accessories. With that, I can take more photos. With that, I can sell them. It is all a cycle. Last night, I got amazing shots of the sunset. Sunset photos are pretty popular in my books, but you can’t pass them down.

Well, I think that completes it mostly.

I hope to get into a healthy routine soon enough.

Talk to you guys soon!

-Dave

ps. Sorry. Photo issues. We will edit it in Lisbon and post more photos!

Off we go!

The ship heads off in 10 minutes! We’ve been “loading” students all day (200+)! There is definitely excitement in the air!

The ship has been polished, the basketball nets are up, we’ve been orientated, the foosball tables are up, Davis has been busy helping with IT and the IRC’s (Intercultural Resident Coordinators), the gym equipment has been put up, we’ve bought our last duty free things, I guess we’re ready to go! Eight days at sea! It will be different, but I’m sure an experience. There has been much talk about the ability to see thousands of stars out on the open water.

Yesterday we headed to the beach for our last land activity for a few days. We enjoyed the company of Lynn (another instructor), Alexa (15 year-old daughter of a staff member) and Kyra (younger daughter of Alexa). On the way back we stopped at Goodies for dinner (the Greek equivalent of MacDonalds).

Today we lose our free internet. We get 250 free minutes for the voyage and then it starts to cost! We do hope to keep up our blog.

Some thoughts – We feel prepared and ready to go! Travel seems to be one of those great leisure activities (reference to the chapter in the Evolution of Leisure, Are some activities better than others?). Travel frees the mind, you seem to have much more sense of freedom to choose and you don't have those feelings/thoughts of obligations. You have more opportunity to define your experience. I do think it’s one of those leisure activities that is better than others. It reminds me of the book Waiting for the Weekend where the author Witold Rybenski (spelling) talks about reading books as one of the optimum leisure activities. Again you get to choose, control how things go. You read as fast as you want, you interpret the story how you want, the ultimate sense of freedom. Enough philosophizing for now! I’m off to the bridge to watch us depart!

It's Coming Together!

Everyday, there seems to be something new on the ship. They are constantly adding new things to the ship, and rushing to get ready for our departure. It is quite fascinating! I thought I saw a flying treadmill, but it was on a crane. The classrooms are all coming together too! I sat there and watched a whole classroom be built in an hour.
The shelves are in the library, and I was recruited to help them get ready by removing the shrink wrap, stamping the books, and soon I will help catalog the library on the computers! It is fun!
Last night, some people gathered in the 'Starlight Lounge' for some snacks, drinks, and Jambai drumming! The ship actually bought instruments to bring on the journey, and we just unpacked those last night! A lady named Sherene (who is very nice) knew how to play them very well, so we all got a lesson and are now pros!
Today I sat through a session on the IT (information technology) and learned that the intranet will be up tonight. That connects us all to each other throughout the ship by email, chat, and Moodle, which distributes assignments and such. We also learned that once our 250 internet minutes are used, it will cost us between 17 and 25 dollars an hour. No more 5 hours a day for me. =(
Right now they are trying to track down the printers and photocopy machines. Somehow, they ended up in Spain, so now it will take a while to get them on the ship!
I have been delaying my studies until the students come. It is sort of my excuse to not start school. Who wants to start school when you are in Greece?
Dad and all of the teaching staff are in lessons all day. Some of them I find quite interesting, actually.
Students will arrive in three days, and everyone is rushing to get ready. We are super excited to get underway on the 5th!
Talk to you soon,
-Davis

ps. Look at the amazing sunset tonight. It was surrounded by thunder and lightning, but I wasn't lucky or quick enough to grab a shot of that.

Boat Life and Beyond

Our first full day on the boat! Wow, although a bit old (40 years) the boat is not a boat but a ship (or so the argument on board goes). It's cool, it's medium size, it's a cruise ship. Various lounges, three small pools, two cafeterias, several theatres, a small fitness centre and comfortable cabins. You definitely have to be careful with what you eat. There's lots of food and plenty of choice and yes very easy to gain 8 lbs per week. Although are several minor "hiccups" with facilities and such (i.e. there still furnishing facilities and receiving supplies) I'm confident we will be able to set sail on September 5th.
Today we had a full day of orientation (i.e. explaining the components of the program, meeting key people including the ship captain) which included an experiential port program (we were divided into teams and went on a bit of a treasure hunt in Athens). Lots of fun and great to get to know our team members. Davis was our group photographer and the main actor in our 60 second Scholar Ship commercial.
We have 4 more days of orientation and they are full days. No sitting around the pool for us.
Thoughts - very surreal being on the boat - very cool boat - neat people from various parts of the world - great to be experiencing this with Davis - great learning already and it's only been a few days - looking forward to learning and experiencing more - travel can teach us so much - the Scholar Ship has all the components to be an outstanding learning experience (global subject matter, port programs, on-board programs, community, research and extension programs, diversity . . .)! More later . . .
-Ken

So Dad mainly covered everything, but there are a few things I would like to add.
The boat is really awesome. It will obviously take some getting used to, but I can tell it will be super fun.
One thing I am really excited about is that there are 2 photographers/videographers that are really awesome. They seem like cool guys. I talked to them about stuff and they seem like they could use some help. I volunteered myself to be their slave. I am so excited that they are on the ship.
I really find alot of this stuff that the adults talk about interesting. I like hearing their opinions about alot of things. I could see myself following Dad's footsteps somewhat.
Well, I guess that is all for now. Dad covered most of it!
Love you all.
-Dave

On The Boat - We're Alive!

Sorry for not posting in a while, but I am way to busy to be on the laptop. There is so much that we have done; this entry may be a little long.

So back to my last journal in Seattle. The flight to Seattle reminded me of Otis Lippit, a camp counsellor that wants to become a pilot. We checked into our hotel (Comfort Inn Express) and it was a pleasant room. We then went out to Roasters for dinner that night. ‘Roasters’ is a big meat restaurant. I was actually quite disturbed by it. There was meat hanging in a display case. I am not a vegetarian, but I found that quite disgusting. Nonetheless, the meal was quite good. I had chicken. Dad had a rice bowl with turkey. We then went back to our room and got on the internet and started our blog, replied to emails, and such. We then watched a bit of TV, and then we headed off to bed, as tomorrow was going to be a huge day. Huge.

We woke up at 5:30 to be on time for our Chicago flight. The lines in the Seattle airport were huge, even at 6 in the morning. Finally we got to check in. It was a long process and we had to wait for a long time. Then we got flagged for extra security measures, because we only have a one way ticket, and that sparked caution. I was super T.O’d about that, but it actually turned out to be an advantage. We got to go in the ‘special’ line, which was practically empty, and it brought us to the enhanced security place. We got to skip a huge line that everyone else had to wait in. The only extra security measures they really took were looking through our bags more thoroughly and tested our bags with chemicals. It really wasn’t that bad. After that, we got to the gate check-in, and waited around there for a while. We grabbed a breakfast sandwich at Burger King. It was alright, but it didn’t compare to mine and Dad’s A&W mornings. Shortly after, we got on our flight to Chicago. The flight was three and a half hours. It wasn’t that bad. I had the window seat. I love the window seat. I saw all of the mountain ranges of Idaho and Montana. It was really cool. We arrived safely in Chicago, and we didn’t have much time to spare before our flight to Frankfurt, Germany. I quickly grabbed a Big Mac at McDonalds, and Dad grabbed a Quizno’s sub. At McDonalds, a girl that was about 20 helped me. She had the thickest ‘American’ accent ever. I almost started laughing. She was saying those typical American words like “HUH?” and stuff like that. It was funny. After downing that, we jumped in line for our flight. The plane was pretty big. It was 3-5-3 and had a 2^nd smaller deck for 1^st class passengers. I was seated in the middle seat and Dad was in the aisle seat. In the window seat was this old man who had a _{(what I thought was)} thick German accent. He was so funny. He would always tap my shoulder and tell me something super random or ask me questions. I found out quite a bit about him. He has a grandson who is 13 and plays a lot of baseball, he lives in Chicago, but was born in Croatia, and that is where he was going to visit. _{(I guess I was wrong about the accent)}. He was complaining about the person in front of him that had her seat reclined for the whole trip. It was hilarious. Every 10 minutes, he would tell me, “This isn’t the economy class, this is the suffering class!” Oh, and all he drank was apple juice throughout the whole flight. On the flight, two movies were shown. The first one was Arthur and the Invisibles, and the second one was called Goal 2. I watched the first one, and half of the second one. After seven and a half hours, the flight was finished. We disembarked and then walked into the Frankfurt airport. It is like a city! People are just smoking in the airport. My lungs are practically dead. In the airport, they had those cool signs with the flipping letters that said all of the flights. It was huge! Dad and I then realized that we have to wait 7 hours for our next flight, so we just wandered for a bit. We sat in the lobby of the nice airport hotel. It was really beautiful. We then walked to the train station in the airport. It was so cool! Trains went all over Europe from the station. I got some cool pictures of the station and the trains. After seeing the sights around the airport and killing about 2 hours, we sat down for a bit. I got a pretzel. It was so good. So me and Dad mainly just sat there, wandered around a bit, and killed time. When I went to the washroom, I got lost for half an hour. Everything looks the same in that airport. It is like driving in Saskatchewan. You can never tell where you exactly are because it all looks the exact same. After a while, I finally found Dad again. We ended up killing about 2 hours. 3 hours left to go. We found a nice quiet place that we slept at. Well, tried to sleep at. I didn’t fall asleep even for a minute. After that, I cracked open the laptop for a bit. All I played was Chess and Solitaire. It actually ended up killing about an hour and a half. After that, we went and grabbed a sandwich at a little place called Time-Out. I had a ham and cheese sandwich. It was pretty decent. Now we only had an hour left, so we went to our gate and just sat there for a bit. I listened to some music and Dad fell asleep briefly. Finally, we were on the flight to Greece! This plane was a smaller version of our previous flight, but looked generally the same. As soon as we were in the air, I fell asleep instantly. What do you expect after being awake for 30 hours? Dad woke me up when lunch came around. I was so groggy. I ended up not really eating. I can never eat when I am tired. I wasn’t that hungry anyways. It is hard adjusting to eating at weird times. It would have been like 2 in the morning in PST, so it is all messed up. After the food, I fell asleep again until we arrived in Athens, Greece. We finally claimed our bags for the first time since Seattle. We never had access to them. A nice Greek man was waiting for us with a taxi, and he brought us right to the Oscar Hotel. I was really tired. We were right by Larissa Station, which was a subway station, so Dad and I went to check it out. We also got some water. With 35°c weather, you got to have plenty of fluids in your system. In our hotel, there is a restaurant on the 2^nd floor, so we had dinner there. It was a four course meal! It was really good. After that, we went to sleep. Our first sleep in Greece!

Our first day in Athens we jumped on the metro and started to explore. We ended up spending the morning at the beach. We toured around downtown a bit and then headed home. That evening we met up with other Scholar Ship staff members and went out for another Greek meal. It was great to connect with others.

Day two we went on a city tour exploring the Acropolis and other historic sites. The evening ended up with another Greek experience at a Taverna (dancing, music, ouzo and so on).

Day three we are now aboard the Scholar Ship!

Off We Go

So here we are, sitting in our nice little Seattle hotel after a grueling 30 minute flight. All is well and we are off to a great start. But as we all know, traveling is tiring and long as is the preparation for traveling. It seems we've been getting ready for this trip for several months. The preparation details over the last few days have been consuming. It's refreshing to actually be moving and on the "trip".

Thanks to Edith and Stephen for driving us to the Victoria airport and Trooper Anderson for having Lucy for a sleepover. We better relax for tomorrow's flight from Seattle to Chicago to Frankfurt to Athens.

-Davis and Ken

ps. We will definitely post more pictures. Hold tight!

Thoughts - Anticipation and preparation are an important part of the travel experience. Be sure to enjoy those elements!