Today is class meeting day "A3."
On the agenda for me is the following:
- Teach "Mass Media Systems Around the World" (Time: 0800 - 0915)
- Sit in on the Global Studies core course that the entire ship "shuts down for" daily - it is held in the Student Union area of the ship with the lecture being broadcast on the closed-circuit TV system of the ship to the various satellite classrooms on the ship for those students who can't fit in the Union (Time: 0920 - 1040)
- Teach "Intercultural Communication" (Time: 1045 - 1200)
This morning I was in the breakfast line immediately behind Archbishop Tutu. Since I hadn’t really formally met him and had only seen him in passing on the ship, I thought now is as good a time as any to introduce myself…so I said to him “Archbishop, I just wanted to introduce myself – I’m the Communication professor on board. I’m Jen.” He shook my hand and then he said something to the effect of “Communication isn’t my field”…to which I just said “Oh, I know!” I then said to him “I heard they kept you busy last night signing books” to which he just said “yes.” So that was my encounter with Desmond Tutu today. He’s not as talkative and personable as I imagined.
Apparently one of the other professors introduced himself to him and said something to the effect of “I heard some people are more excited to meet your wife than to meet you!” (which he said he immediately realized was the completely wrong thing to say and it came out the wrong way). Tutu’s wife is apparently boarding in South Africa. Apparently Tutu responded to that by saying “They need to get their priorities straight.”
On February 15, there will be a one hour session where people can get their photograph taken with Tutu and I guess I’ll try to do that. I think there will be other sessions to get him to sign things and take more photos later in the voyage as well.
The other thing of note today was that I had the Interport Lecturer from Brazil come to my 8:00 am Mass Media Systems Around the World class. His name is Lucio and he is probably in his 30s. He boarded in Puerto Rico and will stay on through Brazil. Professors could sign up to have him speak to their respective classes during that time. At any rate, he came to the class this morning and gave a general overview of Brazilian media which was obviously extremely useful and informative.
We will advance our clocks forward one more hour tonight.
