At Sea

Morning view from Deck 7.

I am ensconced in my little cave. As I lift my eyes from my laptop, my window is cut in half: below, an endless expanse of restless, pewter water; above, an endless sky of billowing, brooding clouds. The relationship of sea to sky changes with each sideways roll of the ship. From my vantage point, my window is a receptacle that fills up with grey sea; we tip backwards, and the sea drains out. Suddenly there is more sky, more clouds; we tip forward, and the receptacle fills up with grey sea again. I’ve grown used to this rhythm, this rocking and almost imperceptible rolling, so much so, that when we get into port, I miss it. Indeed, I don’t suffer from any sea sickness at all, but when my feet take those last steps off the gangway, I am land sick. My inner ears are still at sea, my legs are full of lead. Too much gravity.

Most of the time, I love sleeping on the ship. My theory is: Before birth, we were all rocking gently back and forth, up and down, sea horses adrift in a maternal sea. The ship, on a good night, repeats that lulling motion, although I like things a little bit wild. My favorite nights are when the ship is rolling enough to lift my arms off my body as I lie in bed. I do have my limits. My least favorite nights are when there’s a storm, and the ship has gone beyond rolling, and is lurching, up and down, and then a crash, up and down, and then a crash, up and down, and then a crash…This particular rhythm is not soothing; no one sleeps well on those nights for fear of falling out of bed. A nocturnal visit to the bathroom---only about fifteen steps away---can be perilous. One gropes. One hangs on. One bruises. I wonder: do some babies in utero also sail in choppy seas? Do they spend nine months, lurching, up and down, and then a crash, up and down, and then a crash? Odd to think about journeying as in inchoate, vulnerable, water-born creature, although that’s how it feels, drifting off to sleep at sea.

This blog is about our life at sea. Most of my writing has been about our ports, and with good reason. That’s where the travel is---the Hindu and Buddhist temples, the muddy rivers, the sprawling Asian cities, the delicious food, the funky hotels, and all of our adventures. But the fact is more than half of our time is spent at sea. Semester at Sea is an academic community, crammed into a very small space, not unlike a hotel, and we eat together, drink together, study together, hang out together, make music together, play cards together, whine together---you name it, we do it together. It has all the accoutrement of a campus: a Union where the entire community convenes; a library; a book store; coffee shops and bars. But the space is small, and there’s no escaping students, night and day. I would advise anyone who thinks they’d like to teach in this program: you absolutely must love college students. If you don’t love college students, you may as well walk the plank. Teaching at Semester at Sea is akin to those early, unremitting stages of parenthood: your young are huddled around you, and they don’t go away. I happen to love college students, but if I didn’t, I’d have gone round the bend. A few have.

Students leaving the Union.

The library the day after the final Global exam.

Students, faculty, administration, staff, crew---about a thousand of us are on the M.V. Explorer, and at the moment, we’re surrounded by water with nothing on the horizon. When we’re at sea, classes are held; there are no weekends on board. Because we have no school when we’re in port, we teach every day in order to make up a semester of classes. That means no one on the ship ever knows what day it is. Monday or Thursday? It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is whether it is an “A” day, or a “B” day. On A days, I have two classes, Biomedical Ethics at 8:00 a.m., and History of Immigration Law at 10:45 a.m.; on B days, I have Classical Asian Philosophy at 8:00 a.m. Every day, we all take a course called “Global Studies,” in which we study the country we’re about to explore.

Classical Asian Philosophy Class.

Here’s my routine on board. I’m up by six, and go right to Deck Seven where the weights are, and where you can walk on the deck, although not romantically all the way around the ship as I’d dreamed it would be. Imagine this: hamster peddling mindlessly in her wheel. I stride back and forth, forth and back, the small expanse of Deck Seven devoted to what is called the “Wellness Center.” (Gag.) In my Long Island life, I swim at the Y every day, but here I’ve had to settle for a regime of weights, stationary bicycle, and mindless hamster peddling. There’s a frigid pool of salt water the size of a postage stamp that I got into once. (Twice, if you count Neptune Day when Jo and I, holding hands and covered in fish guts, jumped in together.) When I’m done working out, I treat myself to ten minutes of tai chi on the uncovered portion of Deck Seven. That’s my favorite time of day: there is nothing in my life but an empty expanse of deck, sea as far as I can see, wind blasting in my ears, a sunrise that never fails to surprise me, and the slow meditative movements of tai chi.

I grab a quick breakfast before class. There are two dining rooms: the Garden Lounge on Deck 6 which has an outside deck, and some pretence of elegance; and the Fifth Floor dining room that is dark and cavernous. After classes, Jo and I meet every day for lunch in the Garden Lounge at 12:30, and if weather permits, we eat outside with the same movable feast of friends: Joan, the ship nurse, Ann, the ship doctor, and her husband, Dale, the dependent’s school coordinator, Dee, a marketing professor, Jodie, a communications professor, Joan, a retired government administrator, a “life long learner” (someone who travels independently with Semester at Sea), or if the weather’s bad and we’re inside, we might eat with Nassim, an Islamic scholar, and his wife Nilo, or with Beth, the librarian, or with any random combination of faculty, students, or staff who might be around. The afternoon, at least for me, is spent preparing for class or writing; Jo studies for her Advanced Placement exams. A nap must be had every day. Then often around 5:30, I often go up for drinks with our good friends Bill and Joan, both faculty in sociology and education. On their deck, a motley crew---always the same, always different---drink wine, eat weird little crunchy Japanese things, gossip, complain, watch the sun set, and listen to the tenor lap, lap, lap of the waves against the hull of the ship. Two nights ago, three huge boobies were soaring around right next us, and we tried feeding them some dried wasabe from the balcony. That didn’t work.

The Garden Lounge.

Beth and Nilo in the Garden Lounge.

Dinner is always on the Fifth Floor, this time with a totally different set of friends, our Dinner on the Fifth Floor Friends---Bill and Joan, Joyce who teaches history, and Bob who does audio visuals and IT, and sometimes Jodie. On rare occasions, there’s a mingling of the Outside Deck of the Garden Lounge Lunch Friends and the Dinner on the Fifth Floor Friends, and then we have to squeeze around one of the larger tables. Jo and I almost always eat dinner together, and then she goes off to have her social life, and I go back to my cabin not to have mine.

After a day full of people, I desperately need solitude. In my cabin at night, I get ready for class, or work on my article, or watch wonderful movies they put on TV, or write nasty little short stories, or mess with my blog, or catch up on my email. Sometimes, there’ll be a program in the Union at night. A faculty member or “life long learner” might give a talk on something that amuses him or her---the importance of the Battle of Midway, the genesis of the Gregorian calendar, the engineering of the Panama Canal, recognizing the correct fork with which to spear your shrimp cocktail, the latest teaching of Guru Somebody-or-Other. Being an education junkie, I almost always go. Jo almost never goes; she’s seventeen. The evening is her time to socialize, sometimes up at the Pool Bar, sometimes in the Garden Lounge Bar, but more often in a college student’s cabin where they hang out at night in groups of ten or twelve, crammed in on the beds and the floor like the seals on the shore in Walvis Bay, sleek skin to sleek skin. Monica, Molly, Erin, Erica, Michael, another Michael, Peter, Holly, Heidi, the list goes on. Jo and I sometimes see each other across the Garden Lounge later at night, when I am filling my hot water bottle for my freezing feet, and she’s with her herd, waiting for the snack the kitchen puts out for the students at ten. (I swear, college kids EAT all the time.) She waves at me across the room, and I wave back, but we don’t speak. I can’t imagine how it must be for her to have the her mother intruding on the fringes of her social space, but as with all adversities, Jo bears it with grace.

Louise's little monk cell--Cabin 4091.

Then I go to bed, and it all starts up again. I’ve just re-read this description, and it sounds like a very little life, some might say, a monotonous one, repeating itself over and over again, clouds and sea, exercise, tai chi, classes, teaching, food, friends, students, writing, emails, naps, drinks, hot water bottles, movies, sleep, more clouds and sea. That’s about it. Note also what is not in this description: no traffic, no commute, no making the bed, no trash to put out, no lines to stand in, no cooking, no grocery shopping, no bills, no money, no cell phones, no news, no meetings---the list goes on and on.

Life at sea drives some faculty crazy. They can’t stand having nothing on the horizon, or living in a close community. They’re claustrophobic. They’re sea sick. They’re tired of pasta and ice-berg lettuce the color and texture of ivory alabaster. They’ve lost patience with the energy, the noise level, the persistent, cheerful foolhardiness of the young. Why can’t the students be more serious? Why do they spend all of their time on the deck, half naked? Why aren’t they more interested in things that matter? Why aren’t they more interested in me? What makes Semester at Sea a fabulous experience for them is their time spent on land---the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells of foreign ports of call.

I too love those foreign ports of call, but for me, there’s no greater thrill than the rumble of the ship starting up her engines. She shudders, she lets loose the ropes that tie her to the land, and we head out of the harbor for open sea. Jo and I are both convinced that we must have sailed in a former life. We’re too good at it, and we love it too much, for this to be our first time living and working on a ship.

I’ve also learned this on this voyage: I like a very little life, a close community, and nothing on the horizon. If I just had a cat with me… LH

Jo and her friends outside of the Garden Lounge.