Tuesday, Day 101

Living in rocky, hilly terrain on a heavily-wooded lot in Knoxville’s Lakemoor Hills, I don’t get to see many sunsets.  When we lived at Lanntair Farm there were far more chances to watch the sun go down because our lakeside pasture looked directly to the west and barn chores were often at just the right time for the show.  On this voyage, however, the ship affords unparalleled opportunities to see sunsets over the oceans from an exceptional vantage point and so I suspect that I have reached my lifetime limit on this trip.

As we approach the last port of our voyage, it occurs to many of us that there are many other lifetime limits we need to appreciate in these last few days.  One especially: The last chance to spend so much time with the same group of people, many of whom have become lasting friends.  We know friends and family at home over the course of many years but nowhere else than a voyage around the world over the course of such a long time as four months can we really get the chance to get to know the same people in an intensive way at just the same time we are travelling to visit many new people in many different cultures.

It has been, indeed, the chance of a lifetime.

While most of us will likely never be able to do this again, some on the ship are already planning to come back again.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who serves on the board of directors of Semester at Sea and its parent institution the Institute for Shipboard Education, will be guest lecturer on the next voyage around the world in  Fall 2010.  One of the lifelong learners has calculated that it costs her nearly as much to live at home as onboard so she has already registered.  There are some real advantages to three meals a day and all housekeeping done by a highly competent cabin steward.

For those who can mainly attend courses, it is a great life.  For those of us who must work, it is still a very good life despite all the frustrations of working with limited space and tools.

Many of us discuss how perfectly natural it has become to live in a cabin space of less than 200 sq ft.  A number of us do almost all of our own laundry by hand and find it an easy chore to keep up with.  Although I am not sure how cost efficient shipboard education really is, there is no question but that being in relatively tight quarters encourages a sustainable approach to many aspects of life.

I don’t miss housekeeping, but I do miss cooking terribly—to the point where I’ve started (quietly) working with one or two of the chefs onboard although I’m sure they’d just as soon I leave the cooking to them.

Almost everyone’s biggest complaint is how slow the ship’s satellite Internet access is and how inadequate is the total available bandwidth, particularly when all of the students are in the midst of researching and completing their final papers and exams.  On the other hand, there are plenty of occasions when being able to contact family and friends back home by email feels like an absolute miracle under the conditions of rough seas in the middle of a very big ocean where no land is in sight for many miles and the stars seem closer than anything else on earth.