Preparing for India - 13 October

We are three days away from India and everyone is talking about their plans and how to prepare. I am a trip leader for an excursion to Jaipur, Agra, and Delhi. We had our meeting tonight for the leaders and it pretty much sucked all of the anticipation out of the excursion. We are going to be dealing with a lot of varied travel arrangements, early morning hours (we’re talking 4:00 am departure time) and a lot of students. We were also told the heartbreaking news that our elephant ride in Jaipur was cancelled. Apparently, there is a festival in the city and the elephants don’t like the crowds and get antsy (is that a word that can be applied to elephants?). So, we are replacing the elephants with jeeps. How wrong is that? I’ll tell you. It's very wrong! My will to experience life to the fullest is just a mere flicker now. Forget the Taj Mahal and all the other wonders of India. I want my elephants! Now that I’ve ridden an elephant, I want more! Please excuse me while I take a moment to pout…. There. All done. Now on to the other news of the day.

Tomorrow is a test day for the Global Studies course. This means that all 750 students will be taking a test at 9:15 am tomorrow morning. I am gleeful about this for one reason only. No one will be on the internet! They will all be taking a test. I will be able to blog and e-mail at warp speed. I’m all giddy just at the thought of it. You have no idea how frustrating it is to wait for page to load for 10 minutes – well, my father would since he has had to use dial-up for too many years but the rest of you don’t know how I suffer. I have dreams about instant and reliable internet connections. It’s pitiful!

Well, that’s enough whining for one night. On to other completely unrelated topics. I learned some fascinating information today about alcohol consumption on the ship. How’s that for a non sequitor! For each voyage, the planners (for lack of a better word) figure that each person will consume $2.00 of alcohol per day. On this voyage, we have only consumed $.33 of alcohol per day. That includes both faculty and students. Go figure. From a business point of view, that must be bad news. From a behavioral point of view, Thank God! I can’t imagine what it must be like on the ship with everyone consuming $2.00 of alcohol per day. Boggles the mind.

Speaking of alcohol (much better segue), we had a faculty, staff, lifelong learners reception tonight in the faculty lounge. We have these every once in a while when life on the ship gets to be a grind. Basically, it’s a reason for everyone to gather together and let their hair down (metaphorically since many of the men have lost theirs). Everybody has a great time and it’s a nice opportunity to talk about things other than work. Other than the devastating elephant news, it’s been a pretty good day.