The Last Five Days

We left at Dominica at 8 pm on Sunday evening, just before the Memorial Service.   The next two days we had very rough seas!  Indeed, Barry thinks Tuesday was the only day he's really been affected by sea sickness on the voyage—mostly headaches.  We also had some stomach issues related to our malaria medicine, we think.

Monday and Tuesday exams were scheduled.  Barry woke up Monday morning at 4 am and got up to finish grading field experience papers.  All 90 of his students had had to write short reflection papers connecting material from their Religion courses to their experiences in port.   They were due at midnight on Friday night. He had graded all those that had been submitted early, but he still had about half to do.

Monday evening between exam days, Dean LaVahn Hoh hosted a "Refuse to Leave" reception in the faculty lounge for faculty, staff, and lifelong learners onboard.  Apparently he had carefully protected enough of his budget to be able to put on a really nice reception with what Barry though was some of the best food we'd had on ship. (There was lots of meaty things, so Jayne did not share that evaluation.)

Anticipating the quick turnaround between exams and the due date for grades (Wednesday at 4 pm), Barry had prepared mostly multiple-choice exams with only a few short answer questions.   The ship has a scan tron machine so grading didn't take long and all the grades were posted by noon on Wednesday.

Tuesday evening, after exams, was the Alumni Ball.  This is the big dress-up affair that culminates every voyage.   There are two seatings with reserved tables.   We had signed up to with the Orris family.  They have three generations onboard.  Milton is the grandfather.  He is a retired education consultant who is among the most active people on the ship: volunteering in the writing center, doing workshops on project management for students, and leading Buddhist meditation.   He and his partner Ruth introduced my World Religions classes to Buddhist meditation practices.  Jay and Christy, his son and daughter-in-law, are on board with their two boys, Luke (10) and Ryan (8).  They both attended Dartmouth Business School and are traveling the world for a year with their family after selling several businesses Christy had started. Christy is champion bicyclist In Colorado and is who provided the wonderful spin bikes that we have in the workout facility on board. Also, with us was Mark Peters, who is a Campus Minister at University of San Diego and an adjunct business professor.

After dinner in the main dining room on deck 5, we went upstairs to 6^th deck dining hall for a dessert buffet!  Yum.

Students got dressed up for the occasion and there was lots of picture taking.

Here's one of Barry with a bevy of girls, including Jennifer McGrew and Maritza Miller, our two adopted daughters who go to Dartmouth.

Here are some of Barry's USD students.

Wednesday afternoon, we did a Memorial Circle for Casey Schulman.  There were orchids distributed and the ship did a 360 degree circle and we filed by and threw our orchids into the ocean. 

 

That night we had our convocation.  It was sort of mini-graduation ceremony.  8 or ten students will actually graduate from their universities once their grades from SAS are officially posted. They were honored along with the students who made Dean's list by making all As on the voyage.

Thursday was for packing, putting our luggage and boxes in the hallway for pick up by the ship staff.    There is lots of time for blogging, saying goodbyes, and taking pictures—including some of the coast of Cuba just to our south.

Here's the luggage ready for off loading.

We docked in Ft. Lauderdale early Friday morning.  We were soon cleared for departure and left the ship in groups.  A student had paid $1000 at the shipboard auction several weeks ago for the right to leave the ship first. Student have been divide into residential areas for the whole voyage and the first two groups that had finished first and second in the Sea Olympic some time ago were off next.  Then faculty and staff.  Parents were waiting to greet their students.

We were off ship through customs and to the airport before 11 am.  Unfortunately, we our flight wasn't until 6:00pm. So it was a long day in the airport. Fortunately, we had company. Jayne's Cultural Anthropology professor Leo Chavez and his wife Kathy were waiting in the same area and we enjoyed lunch with them and our ship clown, Barry Lubin at the Chilis in the airport. 

We arrived in Dulles around 9 pm and were home soon after 11 pm.   Evan Tucker, Jayne's cousin's son who had house sat for us, picked us up with his mother Dawn, who teaches math at Madison County High School with Jayne.  They caught us up on all the goings on at home.