TEACHING AT SEA: 110 days circumavigating the globe on a floating campus

Yes...we are now a long ways from Italy, but it was easier to revive this blog than to start another afresh. After a year back in the US and a six week summer return to Italy, we've left the USA to teach on the University of Virginia's Semester at Sea program. Danielle is excited to be back on the MV Explorer once again...and so are we. We sailed from Norfolk on August 24, with Hurricane Danielle chasing us all the way to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Seasickness plagued most of us, but we somehow managed to make it through the faculty and staff training sessions and picked up the students, lifelong learners and Desmond Tutu in Halifax. We arrived in the fog, and explored the city in the drizzle on the first day.

[Foggy view from our cabin's deck on the first morning in Halifax]

The first night in Halifax featured a gala ship-board reception for the parents of arriving students--we faculty and staff led them on ship tours, then feasted on a banquet of appetizers and other delicacies in which chocolate was well represented (the abstract chocolate sculptures kept Danielle in hyper-gear until the wee hours of the AM!). Our second day in Halifax was glorious...so we contined our explorations of the city and its historic citadel warmed by the sun.

We set sail for Spain later that afternoon...a seven day crossing, with a demanding schedule of daily teaching beginning on the second day. Crossing in this direction has proven to be more arduous than we'd anticipated, as we are losing an hour almost every day (what Dean David has aptly termed "death by one hour increments"). But the pluses--classrooms with views of the sea, a wonderful shipboard community, lectures, interesting new colleagues and engaged students--all more than make up for sleep loss, as do those early morning moments of tranquility on the aft deck of the ship...

[Early AM on the aft deck]

Several days into our crossing we were re-energized by awakening to find we were passing the Azores (which surprisingly enough, resembled an Atlantic version of "Bali-Hai"),

[One of the Azonres]

The other plus is being on board with not just our little nuclear family, but my mom and step-dad, as well [see below--the shot taken as we began the voyage in Norfolk].