Ship time. Oct.27,2012
It must be extremely difficult for both the students and faculty to try to pay attention to the main purpose of the trip, which is education. Except for the Atlantic crossing we had had few consultive days on board but have spent many more days than usual in port. My own classes are fine because I have had time to do the reading. In my Literature of the Sea class I wrote a present day Ulysses story to be presented next week. My Digital Story Telling is also progressing, The documentary of my life(!!) is developing Emily, who is a film major, is doing the editing. It is very interesting to see how films are made. It is much more complicated than I ever realized. Many of the students in this class have previous experience doing this and are amazingly creative and clever. One funny thing happened - Erika had asked the class to meet at 9 pm. to film a prelude to the movies the students made to be shown to the shipboard community I did not think this included me so I put on my pajamas, took a Nyquil and was reading when the phone rang. Erika wanted to know where I was and told me to come upstairs for the filming. So I went in my p.j's and famous threadbare down coat having forgotten that I had taken the sleeping pill. When I got there I was slowly fading and they were filming us all jumping up and down dancing. I did it and then returned to my room. I am anxious to see how it turned. Nothing like acting the fool for everyone to see!
Canary Islands
October 1,2012
We arrived at Santa Cruz, Tennerife one of the two larger cities in the Canaries..It resembled Mauritius in that there are high volcanic peaks running down the middle of the island..This is primarily a European tourist resort. I think I mentioned before, my father used to vacation here. The bird canary, by the way is named for the islands rather than vice versa. The name Canary comes from the spanish meaning dog!!i I stayed on the ship the first day and on the second took a trip up to the largest volcano. We drove up through the rain forest above Santa Cruz .It appears always to be cloudy in the morning but burns off in the afternoon. We canae out of the clouds into came out into bright sunshine and dry cool air above tree line. It was very nice. As I was sitting in the warm sun at the top I realized that this was the optimum climate for me - warm sun and cool dry air. No humidity and no cold!!
That evening we set sail for Ghana. Before we reach Tema we shall have six days of ship time.
