Travel Chapter 12 Extended Family

Travel Chapter 12
At sea just over the equator
February 10, 2009

Our extended family

There is a tradition on the SAS voyages whereby adults are asked to adopt a group of students to become their extended families. For many students, this trip can be traumatic and apparently many suffer profound homesickness. It is understandable as not only are they far from their family and friends but they are in strange countries and traveling on board a ship. These are all new and difficult situations by themselves but, but put together and it may be too much for many.

To alleviate this problem, each adult couple is asked to adopt a number of kids. In the first days of the trip, the kids are asked whether they wish to be part of such an extended family. Of the 700 students, 388 signed up for the program. There are only so many adults and some do not want to participate. We signed up to take 7 kids as our experience on the last trip showed us that this is an ideal number.

The kids are assigned on a random basis and a list comes out with their names. I then walked around the ship and invited each one to meet us for dinner in the dining room on the fifth deck. I organized with the dining room steward for him to set aside a table for 9 for us on the appointed day. It was interesting as we did not know any of them, nor did they know us. At the appointed time of 6.30 pm B and I were at the table and no body was there. No one showed up for what seemed to be quite some time but was probably no more than 5 minutes and suddenly they all appeared. Two boys and 5 girls. More or less the same proportion of boys and girls on the ship. As with any such first meeting, it started off a little tense but we went around the table and saying each others names. I then told them who we were and asked each to say a bit about themselves. I took pictures of each one in order to remember names and faces. They were from different parts of the US and studying geology to philosophy. After a pleasant dinner we broke up and agreed to meet again once we had left South Africa. Since then, I have run into most of them in classes and corridors.

You can see the members our extended family at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/akeyserlingk/ExtendedFamilySAS09?authkey=VuOGiMSvZ2U&feat=directlink


So now we have 7 kids on board, in addition to Emmett. We will get to know them as the voyage on continues. On our last trip we had 5 such students and we are still in touch with 2 of them.

Cheers