Bon Voyage

(written yesterday)Aug 27
Today we woke up at 6 because we were helping with general student embarkation.  After breakfast and a meeting I went to the computer lab and assisted people with getting their email set up and getting online.  Lunch was at 12 after which I went back to the computer lab for another hour or so when there was another meeting.  At 4:00 there was a lifeboat drill where we put on our life jackets and did a sort of ship board fire drill.  When it was over we put our life jackets back in our rooms and went to the aft deck so we could watch the shore of Halifax disappear when we set sail.  Very quickly the ship was rocking and rolling and making everyone walk funny.  Our captain says that we will make it away before the hurricane gets near us but it will cause a lot of turbulence.  Sea sick medication is provided for free and is recommended that everyone take some even if they don’t think they will get sick as it is better to be safe than sick and sorry.  Tonight saw all the Faculty and Staff and learned some demographics that I think you might find interesting.  The youngest person aboard is 16 month old baby Griffin, the son of one of the librarians.  The oldest person aboard is a 90 year old lifelong learner of which there are 66 (a new SAS record I’m told).  There are 604 students 63% of which are female and 37% male.  The largest major is Business and the state with the most students is California.  There are 256 different University’s represented here the biggest contributor of students being the University of San Diego.  Tomorrow we have Student Orientation and then Sunday is when classes start.