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These are the meetings I attended today:
1000 – 1045 Honor Code Meeting
1045 – 1145 Health and Safety Meeting
1145 – 1200 Evaluation of Orientation and Wrap-Up
Around 6:30 pm, I ran into Julie (the ethnomusicology professor) and Anne-Claire (the wife of Simon, the professor who is teaching political science and anthropology courses). Julie is 34, Anne-Claire is 31 and Simon will be 31 in about a week so there are a few people around who are my age…When I ran into them, Julie and Anne-Claire were talking to Erin, the 16-year-old daughter of the doctor on board. They were apparently talking about plans to get together for a casual gathering in the doctor and his wife’s cabin around 7:30 and they invited me to join them…so from 7:30 pm until about 9:30 pm, I hung out with the doctor Matt, his wife Leslie, their two daughters (Erin is 16 and Kate is 13), Julie, Simon, Anne-Claire and Gloria, the anthropology professor. The doctor’s cabin is really nice! Very big – it looks like the cabin that is shown on the website as being the typical cabin for deck 5 – it has a huge window that is basically an entire wall of the cabin that faces the ocean. It has enough room for a double bed and a couch in the room.
On the way back to my cabin, I saw that Desmond Tutu was heading toward me as I began walking down my hallway. He was accompanied by someone behind him and appeared to just be doing a walking tour of the ship. As he passed by, I smiled and said hi and he raised his hand with a little wave and said “Good Evening.”
We were told in orientation this morning that he was on the ship and that he was still really tired because he apparently was recently in New Delhi, India, to receive some award. He had just recently flown into the Bahamas and I guess he rested during most of the day to prepare for a fundraising reception that was onboard the ship in his honor. Essentially people paid $100 to have cocktails and $500 to have dinner with Archbishop Tutu. I think they said about 170 people boarded the ship this afternoon to attend that event that was held on deck 7 from 1900 – 2000. Very few staff and faculty attended because we know we will have plenty of opportunities over the course of 100 days to interact with Archbishop Tutu.
view of Nassau, the Bahamas, from the docked ship