Some students may not have fully realized that classes continue right on through the weekend.  But then they –and service points such as the library—completely stop operation while we’re in port, when most go on field trips from among pre-arranged choices (in a catalog numbering over 100) or independent trips.  Many on the ship are doing research and making final arrangements for their first trips in Hawaii on the Monday coming up.  Most of the choice trips are sold out.  There is a lottery system to make the process as fair as possible.  Students get first crack at trips led by their professors.

I’ve been able to buy a trip to Mauna Kea Observatory from a student who drops its corresponding class.  Lee and Tina Riedinger are on the faculty of this Semester at Sea from UT Knoxville, too, and will lead that trip.  Denise Barlow and her husband Jeff are also on the staff.  Former Chancellor at UT, Loren Crabtree, is the executive dean.  There are several students from Tennessee and I’ve met most of them.

Today is the first day that the ocean waves are not so rough and that the sky is clear since leaving San Diego on the 13^th.  A long time under stormy skies!  There is a beautiful sunset this evening before the pre-port lecture.  By tomorrow we’re told we should see other ships making their way to Hawaii.  (And we do.  See the tiny speck of a distant cargo ship in the photo taken from my cabin window of our first sighting of another ship on the horizon.  Birds, especially albatrosses, are also beginning to hover about the ship.)  We will arrive on the Big Island of Hawaii in the port of Hilo on Monday.