So many meetings - no boxes

Well, it's been a long day of meetings and I've got meeting blisters on my brain now. We've had faculty meetings talking about courses, add/drop, grading, and everything else. We've also had faculty/staff meetings where we talked about all the great services that we are going to provide to the students. Then we had another meeting where we discovered which trips we were going to be leaders on. This one interested everyone the most because if selected as a trip leader (the adult who supervises the students on the trip), then we would receive a 50% discount on the price of the excursions. I was choosen as the leader for the trip to India that I signed up for and a "bus" leader for the China trip (which means a 40% discount instead of 50%). Given the price of these things, it's a huge savings that I can use on trips later on in the voyage. I know that I haven't talked about where I am planning to go when in port but I will do that soon when I get my act together and bring the information to the computer with me. My brain blisters prevented me from remembering to do that tonight.

I had a chance to work with my assistant librarian today. Her name is Eileen Chalfoun and she is the director of the library at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona. She has traveled extensively and has wonderful stories about where she has been and what she has done. We talked in the library for several hours which meant that we were constantly approached by faculty members with questions about their class materials. Not totally efficient from the standpoint of figuring out what we are doing, but we certainly made a lot of faculty members less stressed today.

As for the boxes, they are still missing in action - but what the hell. Everybody has been telling me that being flexible is the number one attribute that I will need for this voyage and I'm getting a crash course in practicing it. One of the staff members is calling herself Gumby now and I'm thinking about adopting that name too.

After all of the meetings, Eileen and I went up to the faculty/staff lounge for a glass of wine and found the Academic Dean had beaten us there so we joined him and had a wonderful conversation about religion, past travels, rollercoasters and seasickness. Maybe it was the wine that guided our conversation. It was a fascinating discussion and I have found a kindred spirit for riding rollercoasters. Maybe I can invite him to join me at Busch Gardens next year and try out the rollercoasters : )

After dinner I was in desperate need of some non-ship air and went for a walk around the harbor. It felt so good to get some exercise and not think about the ship or the library for a few minutes. It's now 9:30 and my blisters are starting to turn into warts (is that possible?). It's time to drag my worn out soule to bed and brace myself for more meetings tomorrow.