Boat
Days
Semester At Sea Enrichment Program
Days At Sea
Spring 2011
I am on a three week boat trip through the Caribbean Sea with the Semester At Sea Program. We spend a few days at one port and then head out to sea again. Surprisingly,
I have reached the age where the days at sea are a welcomed relief for me. I need the break. But when I was younger, I
hated those long stretches of time at sea. Those long monotonous days
were like prison sentence to me. I felt
like a caged animal.
But
on this voyage, I am more in the flow of the activities of the day. I get up at a reasonable time every day. I eat breakfast
and then I run off to a lecture or my writing workshop or a photo class.
At
some point during the day I run to the computer lab and check up on my email
and Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. I
send an email to sister and give her helpful hints to pass on to her son as
he, coincidently, prepares for this same voyage next month. I
post bragging, obnoxious status updates on my Facebook account: “heading to Costa Rico: “leaving Mexico”,
“crossing the Panama Canal”. All of
these updates receive replies of jealously which I take as a victory.
I
attempt to read. But the motion of the
ship hindered any progress on this activity. After a paragraph or two, I am too dizzy to
continue. So there hasn’t been much
reading going on. However, that has not
stopped me from checking in to the book exchange to see if there is anything I
want to scarf up. So far, I’ve found
three books that I snuck down to my room.
I’ve
been in the pool a few times. And even though the temperature is 80F, it’s
still too cold for me. So I don’t stay in there too long. It's quick dip to get cooled off and then I'm out of there.
I’ve
been drinking a lot of coffee which is available all day long. So that serves as a break or even a purpose to interrupt my activity from time to time. Fetching a nice cup of coffee gets me up and about around
the ship. And I use this fetching time
to find out what’s going on. I check in
on the news boards to learn what's going on in the world. I look at the all
maps of our next country. I pop my head in
to the computer lab to see if there is anyone I know. I check the message board to see if anything
interests me.
And
then I wander down to my cabin on the 3rd floor. I play some computer games and upload my
photos and fool around with Photoshop.
Sometimes I do a little laundry.
If the boat is rocking too much, I‘ll squeeze in a little nap and listen
to music.
The
yoga fanatics stretch and bend in the back, on deck 4. Yesterday’s session seemed grooling to
me. The instructor seemed to be pushing
some of the participants who did not seem quite ready put their legs behind
their elbows. But he pushed and pulled
and twisted until he got them as far as he could. And after two hours, I had to
stop staring at them. I just couldn’t
take listening to the grunts and pains.
I limped away from my chair in solidarity as I left them in their
pretzel position.
The
sunbathers line the perimeter of the pool.
And they doze in and out of sleep and make lots of pretense to reading
their books. But that doesn’t last long. The intensity of the sun makes it too
difficult to squint that long.
In
the shade sit the Kindle readers, the Sudoku puzzle people and the crossword
puzzle people. A few people, such as me,
sit and write their journals. The bar is open so most of us have a drink by our lounge chairs.
And then,
deeply hidden in the classrooms are the card players. They sit under the florescent light bulbs, in
air conditioning, with no view or smell of the ocean. They could be anywhere for all they
cared. They were immersed in their
games of bridge or gin rummy or whatever.
And when we are in port, many of them stay behind and spend the
afternoon on board, playing cards. “No, I didn’t go ashore,” I hear them
telling people, “We played cards all afternoon.”
And then, all of the sudden, the sun is going down and lots of people are on the back decks, snapping away at the sunset. And each night, I hear, “this sunset is even prettier that last night’s” and lots of photos are taken, by me and many others.
After dinner, there is lots of entertainment. There is a jazz group, a pianist, a Latin music couple, the opera singers, the DJ and the professional dancers. And they all perform to a gracious crowd who admire their talents.
Last
night I listened to Roland Wiggins play on the piano. He played love songs from the 50’s. 60’s
and 70’s. And the crowd, mostly in their
late 70’s, acknowledged every tune and named every song. And you know, “they just don’t make beautiful
music like this anymore.” And as they
clapped, they discreetly checked their watches. Roland was playing beyond his
usual quitting time of 8”0PM. And now it was 8:15PM and encroaching on their
regularly scheduled routines to end the day.
“How long is he going to play tonight,” they asked in what they all
thought was a whisper. But since most of
them have hearing problems, they are unaware that their whispers are delivered
in a loud enough voice for the rest of us to hear with ease.
The
ship gets pretty quiet after 9:00PM.
There is a bar with a DJ and I haven’t ventured up there yet. But the DJ doesn’t even get started until
10:00PM. So I can’t image it gets too
crowded because most of us are in bed by 10. Maybe I’ll venture up there before the end of this trip. And then, maybe not.
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