8/26/11 Student Embarkation Day

Hello again!  450 college students, mostly from the USA, but from all over the globe boarded the ship today.  The doc and I spoke briefly with every single one of them, which took all morning and into the afternoon.  There can be up to 700 students on the voyages, so this is a relatively small group.  Maybe that will translate to more free time for me???  In the afternoon we had our first clinic.  Today it was mostly questions about medications and malaria, but there were a couple of people with unusual conditions that saw us.  The clinic has more resources than I expected, although I could not get access to the internet when I needed it.  I'm told this is usually not a problem, but the internet is often very slow.  "Up-to-date" and "Epocrates" may be harder to use than I expected.  Before every voyage sets sail, there is an extensive lifeboat drill.  The freaky thing is the amazing number of people that fit into each one of those not-so-big boats. 150, to be exact!  It brings to mind the old Volkswagon bug commercials (?) where more and more people keep getting out of the car. Hopefully none of us will get to experience those lifeboats, except to look at them!

At 5 pm we pushed off from Montreal to the cheers of the students and the goodbye wishes of their families and friends on the dock.  It was a picture-perfect afteroon with no hint that there is currently a not-so-nice storm named Irene heading our way. We were told by the captain that we will never be within 600 miles of Irene.  I was very glad to hear that, having lived though a previous typhoon experience on Semester at Sea in 1988. That is the kind of thing that you never want to experience once, let alone twice.  After a nice dinner and some picturesque country-side viewing from the sunny deck, there was an opening presentation where all the staff and faculty were introduced. There is some amazing talent and experience on this voyage, and I hope to take advantage of this opportunity to "sit in" on some of the course offerings.  The required "Global Studies" course starts tomorrow and I'm looking forward to participating in that course, and maybe a comparative religions class also.  I'm on call tonight and it is late, so I'd better get some sleep while I can.