Splitting the hurricanic uprights

Hello from a path directly between two hurricanes!

Yes, that's correct.  Our captain is sneaking between them.  Today was actually super calm and still.  I was so thankful!  But the bouncing picked up significantly about 2 hours ago.  I'm glad its just time for laying in my bed. This doesn't feel good at all. 

Tomorrow (Sunday) is our first day of classes.  I'm so excited to be done with training, student check-in, student orientation, student common reading groups, student involvement fair, and Sea meetings.  So far, the students have been great.  Of my 94 students, I probably have about 50 names down.  I need to have them all down by Spain (per my supervisor's request). Our reading group was impressive with their critical thinking and contributions to discussion.  (Background - each student was asked to read the book "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid.  They were then divided up into small groups facilitated by 2 faculty/staff to discuss the book.  We will then meet after every port as a reflection group).  My co-facilitator is awesome - she's the assistant librarian and we came up with a great activity to do with them.  I was very proud of us!

In other boring news, I finally got together my scheduling system for my big administrative duty of scheduling all evening classroom use.  Not sure how this fell into my lap, but I'm glad to have found some time today to get my foundation together.

Daily Archbishop sighting:  There were 2 today - he came into the Union to speak to the students during orientation.  Everyone stood up for him and clapped, and he talked about how students energize him.  He even did a little dance of gratitude and excitement.  He's wonderful.  I also saw him at dinner  - he just rolled into the dining hall and sat down at the table next to us and ate with students.  He's very generous with smiles, hugs, and laughter.  Just a delightful man.

We lose another hour tonight - now I'll be 3 hours ahead of Central time.  I think we'll lose time a couple more times before we're in Spain.

What's bizarre is that I no longer have perspective of days of the week.  I was expecting this, but when someone said today was Saturday, it felt so weird. 

I also finally had some time to head up to the faculty/staff lounge tonight (called the Glazer lounge).  No students allowed, free goldfish crackers, $4 beer/wine.  We needed some Glazer Talk (GT from here on out - I wish I could add an "L" at the end of that).  It's the only safe place to release frustrations about students (not that I would EVER be frustrated with ANYONE).

So now we'll find out what our days are actually like - tomorrow I'm meeting with my Program Assistant in the morning, Living Learning team in the middle of the day, and my RA in the evening.  There will be some downtime, especially in the morning.  I'm definitely looking forward to it.

All right, I have to go to my bed. 

loooooove yous!

PS - I imagine these blogs will get more exciting once I'm OFF THE SHIP!