Travel Chapter 27-At sea enroute to Guatemala

We are now approaching the coast of Guatemala after 7 full days at sea. The sea has been calm for the most part but cloudy most of the first 4 days. Things lightened up on the 5th day and we have had nice sunny days since then. It is 4400 miles from Honolulu to Puerto Quetzal and that is only half of the Pacific Ocean. It is a huge body of water especially compared to the Atlantic. During those 7 days, we saw 2 ships and were followed at various times by Albatross and Boobies, which are both sea birds. We saw a few dolphins in the water but mostly these waters do not exactly team with wildlife.

The days have been busy with classes ending and the kids studying for their final exams. As a matter of fact, the word must have gotten around as I saw more people studying on this last leg than on all other legs together. It is only then that one realizes that there are 730 students on board the ship. It would appear that a third is always sleeping, an other third is always sunning and the final third is in class. Rarely if ever does one see the full complement of students.

But with finals being so important to the overall grade they will get for the semester, reality has hit. They had their Global Studies exam day before yesterday. This a daily course every morning which all must attend. I gave a lecture on Development, Banking and the World Bank and 5 of the 100 questions actually covered my material. So there are now 700 odd students and perhaps 50 adults who know more about that subject then when they came on board three months ago.

As we approach land, we have got the news of the swine flu outbreak spreading around the world. A suggestion was floated this evening at dinner that perhaps we should continue cruising on the high seas until the flu is over. By staying in our own world we would not be exposed to the bad things happening on land. But that will not happen and we will have to face the flu when we rejoin the community of humans on land. Hopefully, it will not be too bad and most of us will survive. Too bad that young and old people are the only ones who do not seem to be getting the flu. Those are the breaks but we will take those and hope our own younger people will not be harshly hit by this most recent epidemic. I did buy some Tami flu pills for us a year ago but they are safely ensconced in Virginia so not too much help there at least until we get home.

Exams are taking place. Emm has written 3 so far and has one more when we get back to the ship after visiting Guatemala. I asked the University of Virginia registrar on board whether they would give him some sort of credit document for his work and doing well in the exam and they declined. I have suggested that Emmett contact the individual professors when they get back to their campuses so that they can issue him a letter attesting to his attendance at the course and his good grades. That should not be a problem as they all appreciated his active attendance and his good grades at the various tests and exams. It is interesting to see a 14 year old who is doing more work and doing better than many of the college level students. One prof was telling me about a student who was asked in the final exam to answer 20 questions and to write a short essay. The kid got 15 answers wrong and then in the essay section he wrote only;” I guess I should have attend the classes.” Amazing to see how irresponsible some of them are. But for the most part, the student body takes the courses and results seriously as they become part of their academic record no matter where they are currently studying. As many have fairly high GPA’s when they come aboard, they are interested in seeing that their results from this semester do not bring down their average scores which are important when applying to graduate studies.

We will be docking tomorrow morning and then driving with Wally Daniels up to Antigua where we will be staying at his house with his wife Sonia. Wally used to work with me in our Abidjan office and he and his wife decided to build a house in Antigua and retire there.

Emmett will be going with a group from the ship under the supervision of our medical assistant and his wife to a Zip wire place just outside Antigua tomorrow. The next day, he and I are booked for an early morning start to fly up to northern Guatemala to visit Tikal, a Mayan ruin. We will return the same day. After 7 days at sea, everyone is looking forward to some time on land.
More on this later.
Cheers