A Fancy Schmancy Dinner - 8 September

Today was a very good day. After the Global Studies class I went up to the top deck where the pool is located and soaked up the sun while reading a book for pleasure. It was blissful. There weren’t many students around – I suppose the majority of them were in class so I pretty much had the place to myself.

After lunch I had my shift in the library and spent some time brainstorming ideas for projects in the library. The students have come up with some good ones too. They have also started a library blog that we will all participate in. I haven’t read the first entry yet but I’m told it is very creative. I’ll be sure to post the link here when I get it.

The best part of the day was this evening. I received an invitation to dine with the captain and his senior staff. At 7:30 about 20 faculty members and I gathered in the faculty lounge. We were all dressed up in our fancy clothes and looked pretty damn good. We mingled for about ½ hour before the captain announced that dinner was being served on deck 5.

We went down to the main dining room which had closed for the evening. There were four tables set up with the largest one belonging to the captain. I was seated at the staff captain’s table who is the second in command of the ship. Also at the table, was Eileen, the registrar, and the associate executive dean and his wife. The menu was placed on the table and I immediately started to drool. The menu listed a tomato, mozzarella, basil salad, spinach soup, salad, and choice of entrée – either a filet mignon or sword fish – and for dessert, chocolate mousse. It was so damn good. The waiters were impeccable in their service, the wine continued to flow and then there was the filet mignon. I would like to insert of moment of silence in gratitude and appreciation of this entrée. I wanted to tell the others not to talk to me while I ate it so that I could savor every mouthful but I figured that was just a wee bit rude. Let me just say though, that this meal may be the highlight of the voyage for me – it was that good.

After dinner, we all went back upstairs to the faculty lounge where one of the decks was having a party. The students on the decks are divided into seas (Aegean, Baltic, etc) and they do things together as a sea. Last night one of the seas was having a party and the faculty members crashed the party. It was a great time. Even the Executive Dean and the Captain got out on the dance floor. Fortunately, the students thought this was great fun and encouraged all of us to join them so Eileen and I showed the youngsters that librarians know how to dance too. This photo shows Eileen and I with the Executive Dean, Ed Glatfelter, at the party. The dance ended at 11:00 and everybody reluctantly called it a night and returned to their cabins. It’s been an excellent evening!