....and we're off!

It’s Day Two of the voyage. We’re moving northeast toward Nova Scotia, and have already lost our first hour to the change of time zone. (Goodbye, Eastern! Hello, Maritime!) The weather is pleasant: warm, breezy, but calm. It’s a lucky thing, as we’ve all spent our first full day adjusting to the incessant rocking: back and forth, each wave lasting about ten seconds. Last night it was disorienting. As soon as we cleared Norfolk harbor (sometime after I went to bed around 11:30), I suddenly noticed that my head was diving into the mattress, as if gravity were forcing me into my pillow. It became more intense in the middle of the night. By morning, we were all trying to decide whether the change had affected our digestion. I was fine. During the never-ending orientation sessions I closed my eyes and let myself enter into the slow rhythm of rocking, letting my spine sway back and forth: first one direction, then eventually (inevitably) the other.

We boarded yesterday after a purgatory of housecleaning. Nancy had sent the kids off to our babysitter’s house for the day. It didn’t seem hard—no tedious scrubbing, no backbreaking moving of furniture—but it didn’t end. By 4, the kids had woken from their naps, and I took them over to the English Inn, where Nancy had reserved a room for the night. We left them frolicking in the pool with Flora. I thought we’d be wrapping things up within an hour or two. But Nancy’s vision of cleanliness, as always, is more thorough than mine, and to get the last annoying surfaces cleared meant endless negotiations with our diminishing storage space. It wasn’t until 10:30 that she declared the place ready and let us rescue Flora, who had been sitting in the hotel room, listening to her Zune in total darkness. I felt ready to strangle her. But I had to admit the next morning that she was right. It looked like a different place, ready for our renters from Pepperdine. We hugged Flora—it was our last chance to see her before she starts college!—and headed home for some sleep.

It took less than three hours to get to Norfolk. We packed an extraordinary amount of stuff—clothes for all of us, teaching materials, books, large supplies of kids’ books and toys, food and medicine for more than 3 months. (We’re still unpacking it.) But as promised, it was pretty easy to board: unload the suitcases and boxes onto a cart and watch them carried off by a small forklift. By the time we checked in and got our keys, everything was waiting outside our rooms. We had to say goodbye to our daughter, Amelia, outside the boat (we’d neglected to put her, or our friend Rollie Lawless, on the list of approved dockside visitors), but it was exciting for the girls to finally see “the boat”—not the imposing battleship out front (that’s for the Norfolk Naval museum), but the colorful blue and orange vessel behind.

Of course, they love it. They love seeing the ocean passing swiftly by outside our window. (“It’s so blue!,” reported Celia this morning.) They love the food, which admittedly is pretty darn good right now. They charm the Filipino waiters, who don’t seem to mind having to clean up a few milk spills in exchange for the entertainment of watching their antics.
And they’re behaving pretty well. No one has thrown, or dropped, anything off the side (although Lena, the daredevil, has come pretty close). We’ve taken them up and down, back and forth, and they’ve gotten to know the vessel pretty well.

The rest of us have gotten pretty bogged down in orientations, a miasma of Powerpoint and educationese, but the worst of it seems over. It’s much clearer by now what we need to do to make things work, and both Nancy and I are looking forward to carving out some time to fine tune our classes. We’re also realizing other ways we can contribute. Nancy wants to teach Reevaluation Counseling. Browsing through the library stacks, I found a small collection of choral works, and there seems to be enough singers to get a choral group going. These things make us feel more like we’re part of a community, bringing to the group something from our own experiences. And of course we’re eager to take our place as one piece in the broader intellectual fabric.

The ship is gorgeous: a former cruise liner, and you can tell. In fact, the maps still have the old names for the rooms rather than the new, stuffier names that Semester at Sea has rechristened them, which is amusing and confusing. Seven decks (although the first deck is presumably off limits—storage and engines, I assume), with decks 5-7 being primarily public spaces. We’re on Deck 5, with a balcony. Everything is beautifully maintained, and the staff is extraordinarily helpful. We haven’t been able to spend that much time outside, thanks to our non-stop meetings, but there’s plenty of deck space, especially in the rear of the vessel (where the swimming pool is).

So as the day runs to its close (an hour early—my computer is still on Eastern time), I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

48 hours to go!

We’re not quite there, but it feels like we are. (See illustration.) Forty-eight hours to go! Sometime Monday morning, we'll be driven by friends and family down to Norfolk, where we will unpack our bags and officially begin our voyage. But right now it's still Saturday--grey and overcast, perfect for the big task of packing.

I’ve spent the past week untangling the threads of my life. My nose has become clogged with dust. For the first time in my professional career, my office is clean enough for an average person to use. All the stuff that cluttered the surfaces is stacked away in boxes—some tiny, some enormous. My desk now offers vast, clear spaces, ready for someone (not me) to accomplish Great Things. I’ve emptied out my closet, picking what I’m going to wear, from sultry Vietnam to chilly Halifax. Those clothes will be crammed into suitcases. The other things I’ve decided to take onboard are piled onto my reading chair in a blue storage bin, awaiting a more suitable container for storage to the ship.

It’s a miscellaneous bunch of stuff. There are a number of DVDs and a few of my CDs (most have been digitized and stored on my computer and I-pod); a stack of blank CDs; voltage converters and power strips; playing cards; little plugs for my cell phone; my yoga equipment; Ghanaian gankouis, axatse, and drum sticks; razor blades; my repertory of piano music; an empty pill bottle; and a large pair of powered speakers, which apparently will be necessary to make music heard on the noisy boat (excuse me, ship). I was told to take along slippers—and I’ve found one, which doesn’t quite seem enough. Pencil sharpeners. Portable hard drives. And of course, my computer (and hard drive, and headphones, and mouse….). The eternal question: what have I forgotten?

All I know is it’s supposed to be cold. I was warned to bring along slippers and sweaters. And that the food will gradually grow worse over the three and a half months. To ward off gnawing hunger, we’ve packed some peanut butter, crackers, trail mix, and a few other things. And of course, tea. I will give up my caffeine to no one. All those things are in cardboard boxes. We were going to ship them, but then thought, why not just take 'em? One thousand disposable diapers, on the other hand, will come directly from the manufacturer to dockside.

For those little ones, a vast store of toys and books, mostly culled from garage sales and E-bay, to be distributed carefully over the 110 days. We’re hoping these goodies can be stored in the inner room, so that the twins will never see the source. We’ve shown them the ISE video of the voyage to give them a hint of life on the boat (I mean ship). Yet I’m still waiting to see their faces when they see how big it is, and when they realize that it’s all there for them to explore.

Hope it's a nice day!