Goodbye España, Hello Italia

A few days in Spain, and we're off. Back to teaching. Students are happily exhausted, saying they used their Spanish everywhere: bar hopping, traveling, shopping, eating. Almost three days of class have already passed, and we'll be in Italy. Congress woman Loretta Sánchez has been our inter-port lecturer, preparing us for the Italians, international politics, and not bringing cheese back into the States.

Mar Mediterráneo

Walking out on the jetties to a small island off the coast of Tarifa, we came to the tip of the town, standing between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

The "Southest" Town of Europe

Mar Atlántico

All White

The Old City in Tarifa. Not a cloud.

Jamie and I in Tarifa

Poets reunion--the best part of my trip. Thanks, Jamie!

Tarifa with a Window to Morocco

While all the students were catching buses north to Sevilla, I decided to head south to Tarifa, where a friend of mine from my undergraduate years in the UVa poetry program is now living. After four years, I found Jamie in a cafe in the Old City there. Here is a picture of the Atlantic from my hostel balcony.

Have a Leg and Goodnight

Getting Down with the Locals

Noche Flamenco en La Cava

Balconies and City Streets

Hymnal

The Old City

The influence of Muslim and Christian architecture can be seen everywhere here.

Monument to the Constitution of 1812

By 1812, Napoleon had conquered all of Spain except for Cádiz. A constitution of over 300 pages was written, declaring Fernando VII the one and true king, and those who signed it are honored here.

My Students

On my first official FDP (Field Directed Program), the Cádiz City Orientation, my students wanted to take a class picture on the beach. I also took another group of students to the mall at 10 in the morning and saw flamenco with a glass of sangria in the evening. I thought my night would end with tapas, eating the best chorizo (sausage), tomatoes, and olives, I've ever had--in a bar with some colleagues while jamón serrano was hanging from the ceiling. I had a glass of cava (Spanish champagne) and then a delicious glass of Spanish Rioja wine). The bill was less than 10 Euros. On our walk back to the ship, my friends and I found ourselves outside the flamenco bar we visited earlier that evening. We decided to go back in and ended up talking to the family who owned the bar. They happened to be celebrating their son's birthday. By the end of our time there, we were drinking toasts to the son, and the mother of the family was singing sevillanas (flamenco songs). We didn't get home until 1.30AM, but I could still hear people boarding the ship well after that time.

Verano en España

In the distance, you can see one of the old look-out points for this centuries-0ld port city, one of the most important places of trade after the discovery of the Americas.

The View Coming In

First Point of Departure

Many on board awoke just to have the opportunity to see where we'd plant our feet after 9 days of crossing the Atlantic at 17 mph.

Dawn, Coming in to port in Cádiz

Land Ho!

Five days without land will make even the smallest island interesting. Tutoring my students in office hours, I was interrupted by the loudspeakers, which informed us that the captain had intentionally gone off course for us to have the opportunity to see the Azores islands. In the first picture: some students admiring the land. According to wikipedia, the Azorean islands are "abour 1,500 km (950 mi) from Lisbon and about 3,900 km (2,400 mi) from the east coast of North America."

A note on the students: these are some of the most hard-working kids I've ever had. A few of them have met with me in office hours every day to be sure they understand the homework. A couple days in a row, I must have had about 10 students surrounding me to get help in the Piano Lounge outside the cafeteria, leading another professor to suggest to me that maybe I should slow my class down. But this professor hasn't seen the results: many of the students have never spoken Spanish in class before, and some have never taken a class of Spanish at all (NOT the prerequisites for my course). They have completed four chapters in six days, they are now all speaking Spanish in class and acting out plays depicting possible scenarios they will encounter in Spain. In one class, when I asked how many students wanted to go shopping in Cádiz to practice their clothing vocabulary half of my first class raised their hands.

(On the other end of the spectrum, I have a native speaker in my Intermediate Spanish course. Señorita keeps explaining she wants the class to learn the grammar, but laughs at other students or rolls her eyes when they say something wrong. At UVa, this girl never would have been allowed in my class, but she sneaked by on the first day, and became permanent after ADD/DROP was over. This is an wide range of students.)

See, Turtle?

The first few days of rough seas and nausea became relatively calm, and the water a deep, clear blue.

Leaving Halifax.

Rock the Boat

According to the Dean, my previous count was a bit misleading. Although there are roughly more than 700 students on board, the total number of people on the MV Explorer is more than 1050. After six days of consecutive classes, that number is probably a little less as I have discovered that at least one of the students on the roster never made it to the ship in Halifax.

Voda voda everywhere

The doctor, yesterday, with his many years of ship-board experience, said these were the first waves he had seen that were so big on a cross-over. (I don't know how many feet they were, but they reminded me of a night trip to the Bahamas when my coffee fell, fell up, and found itself splattered over the ceiling of Rhino.) A member of the crew with eleven years of experience had his first bouts of seasickness. Air spray and little white bags were scattered throughout the ship, but in the evening and at every meal we could see most students were unaffected and having a great time, playing cards, meeting new people, wandering around the ship. I'm feeling fine, and excited about my first day of teaching. With all the wind howling this morning, I'm eager to see how well I can write on the board or get these kids to move around in a moving classroom in the bow of the vessel.

Aft

700 students are boarding this ship as I take a break from meeting and greeting to write this post. I've already found one of my sister's friends in line. A glance at that line and you'll get a hint of the demographics: 77% female. Around the rumor mill people are saying an entire sorority from a Texas institution will be aboard. Pretty soon, this ship will be full.

Theodore Too

A World War II replica tugboat, one of the highlights of Halifax, it appears on a television series for children...

The Public Gardens

Halifax is a small city with over 300,000 residents. Beautiful boats, gardens, and, putatively, better lobster than in Maine.

Halifax

Welcome to Halifax. We arrived at 8AM yesterday and had our last day of meetings before the students boarded ship. A few breaks to explore on our own. Here is Halifax with a view from the Citadel.

Life Preservers and Licorice is Money

The two things that keep me afloat: on my neck and in my mouth.

When you can't see land, all you want to do is eat, which can be a problem for people with particulars. If anyone has access to to Dutch Money Licorice please buy as many bags as you can and mail to any port along my trip. I have the cabin fever munchies, and the only thing I want to eat is black, sticky, and diminishing in quantity.

Leaving Boston

Tonight we left port. Met a fascinating poet, David Swerdlow, who knows a great deal about Latin American poetry and Spanish poetry, in particular Rafael Alberti. I'm excited to share more conversations with him and some other teachers on board. Above is the tugboat that tugged us to the sea.

Halifax bound.

The Ship, Not the Boat

This thing is big. To give you an idea: my room has one more bathroom than either of my last two rooms on the range, a large closet, two desks, two beds, a television, and a minifridge. Apart from my room, the ship boasts a workout facility, two cafeterias, a pool, a spa, a library (former casino), an assembly hall, and many classrooms. Which is why I have already been corrected by one veteran voyager when I accidently called the MV explorer a boat. "You can put a boat on this ship, but you can't put this ship on a boat." Good point.

My window to the world underlooks this staircase, which passengers were using till 2am. I have a good eye for what's going on here.

I've met a lot of fascinating people (teachers, staff, librarians...), with whom I'll be having meetings all day today. The voyager departs 2300 tonight for Halifax.

The Itinerary

Boston, Massachusetts

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Cádiz, Spain

Civitavecchia, Italy

Naples, Italy

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Piraeus, Greece

Istanbul, Turkey

Varna, Bulgaria

Alexandria, Egypt

Casablanca, Morocco

Norfolk, Virginia

Semester at Sea, Summer 2009

Welcome. This blog will document my time in Semester at Sea, Summer 2009.