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Published: June 16th 2007
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Why I'm Here
So...here I am two miles from Ensenada, Mexico. (I believe it's about 60 miles south of San Diego on the Pacific coast of Baja California.) This massive ship is anchored in the middle of a bay which is surrounded by Ensenada - apparently we needed to make room for other ships to dock. (Fair enough - we have to be here until Sunday when the students arrive on buses from San Diego.) Life aboard the MV Explorer is pretty amazing. Apparently I don't get seasick which is a huge blessing (it seems to be either seasickness for those who do, or else extreme drowsiness from the medication they use to combat it!) Today is the last day of orientation - it ends in a couple hours, thankfully, and then we'll get down to business on what exactly we're doing for the first week of our course. For those of you who don't know, I'm officially a teaching assistant for my Master's thesis advisor's course (Brian Owensby) which is required for every one of the 302 undergraduates on the ship. The course goes by various names - Latin America Today, Global Latin America, Global Studies - but
Ensenada Harbor
Hmm, doesn't look like we're in the US anymore (this is the biggest flag I've ever seen!) it will take place every morning we're at sea (23 days, I believe) in either lecture or discussion form. We 3 TAs (and Brian) will each lead 14 discussion sections (two iterations of seven different discussions throughout the course), and the grading of papers will mostly fall on the TAs. A small price to pay for this summer, wouldn't you say? Still, I can see it will be a pretty intense environment - there's no distance between students, faculty, and staff; many undergrads will be leaving home for the first time; expectations for this voyage are pretty high as it is the first time UVA has its own academic dean and the faculty are either all UVA people or chosen by UVA. It sounds amusing, but we're attempting to bring "rigor with reason" to Semester at Sea, where formerly Global Studies was an excuse to hand out pages from the CIA World Factbook and give multiple-choice tests on various events in the countries' histories. I think we can do it!
The Ship
The MV Explorer is a massive vessel. Words can't quite express what I thought when I first boarded it...the hallways are longer than most hotels I've
Ensenada City
Caught the beginning of a parade down a main street in Ensenada...pretty talented young musicians! ever been in. Rooms take up 3 entire decks of the ship (though they're working on the lower 2 decks while they have a reduced number of students, compared to the full semester programs - this is just a summer one.) Fourth deck, where I live ...now that I think about it, it's all rooms too. Fifth deck has several gathering places, a couple dining rooms, and more living spaces. Sixth deck, where much of life on the MV Explorer takes place, has nine classrooms, a "campus store", the main dining room, the Union (really a large auditorium where the lectures for our course will take place, and many of the orientation meetings have gone on there). Seventh deck is perhaps the most fun - the Faculty/Staff Lounge (a panoramic view of the sea or the port where we are, with comfy chairs and glass tables and round-the-clock coffee...becomes a sort of bar at night, but I can't get too used to swiping my ship card to pay for drinks!!) There is a "Jade Spa" at the other end of seventh deck, which has what looks to me to be a full spa and sauna, and more interesting to me,
"Anthrax"
Good thing I have my Cipro along! (I actually do, but it's more for food poisoning or whatever than anthrax!) a compact but well-provisioned exercise room with stationary bikes and treadmills! (I think the bike will be my workout machine of choice - unlimited cruise food plus trips into the highlands later mean I need to be in decent shape soon!)
My cabin - which I'll take some pictures of for the next entry - is awesome. It's amazing how they've gotten everything into such a tiny space. I have two beds in there, but it's just me. There's also a little table that protrudes from the wall, making a nice workspace, a coffee table with a chair (to my surprise, I came back and some clothes I had carelessly left on the chair were all nicely folded up!!), and a tiny yet more than adequate bathroom with a shower! (Nice water pressure and temperature too!) It's Cabin 4120, should anyone need to reach me in any emergency kind of way. Otherwise, email is probably the best way to do so...we are now online and I can receive email much as I can at home. Taking advantage of not having students on the ship - the limited bandwidth will get quickly and frequently used up when they're awake and
Sunset over Sea
This cloud and sunset was too cool not to photograph! (Some random ship instruments on seventh deck included for authenticity) on the Internet! I'm thinking of going to an earlier schedule in general - a faculty member on the ship teaches a yoga class at 6am (he welcomes beginners), and students aren't yet awake to do their Internet stuff. Also, I'll have the workout room almost completely to myself, and then it'll be time for breakfast.
Ensenada
We've been off the ship once - a little sojourn into Ensenada, which is your basic Mexican-US border town (even though more distant from the border than others.) We ate dinner there and could see the ship from pretty much anywhere we walked in the city. I think it's a frequent stop for cruise ships...the dichotomy of having little kids come up to you and try to sell you
chicle (little packets of gum) and knowing you're going to go sleep on this massive floating luxurious thing docked in the harbor later is quite odd and unnerving. Right now, we couldn't get off the ship unless we really wanted to swim a couple miles (or get sent home), but we'll be docking again this evening, which will be my last chance to call, buy provisions, whatever for the next few days. Next stop Acapulco! (We leave Ensenada tomorrow at 5PM, or as I'm getting quite used to the 24 hour clock we use for everything here, 1700.) I attached a couple pix of Ensenada...sadly, the pictures I took at night when we left San Diego harbor looked far better and less fuzzy on my camera screen than they did when I uploaded. (And I had my tripod in my cabin...time to start using that thing!)
Sorry I didn't get to call more of you before I left the US! I asked Verizon to suspend my phone the first day we were going to be in Mexico (6/14) but apparently they did so right in time for my free minutes when we were still in San Diego on 6/13. Bums! Anyway, just one more reason why email is the best way to contact me until August 21, at least!
Not a ton to report in this blog, actually - just wanted to get everyone subscribed and let you all know I'm doing well and describe the ship and Ensenada a bit. Most of my time in Acapulco will actually be spent in Mexico City, which I'm very excited to see. I'll have a long entry about that, but have promised not to blog in ports...so perhaps another entry before Acapulco. Until then,
hasta luego (see ya, or literally "until later") as I try and keep dusting off my Spanish!
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katie
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Sounds like fun! Keep me updated and enjoy it! *jealous kt* :o)