The Suez Canal and Sea Olympics - 30 October

Note: I was only able to load two pictures on the blog due to time constraints and the blog acting up. I did add a Halloween picture for the previous post. I'll add the last two photos when I return from my trip in five days.

Last night around 11:00 pm we stopped at the entrance to the Suez Canal and spent the night there with about 15 or so other ships. This was going to be our convoy for our passage through the canal. Since the canal is so narrow and can only accommodate one ship’s width in most places, they have a system where the north bound traffic is allowed to go through in one convoy without stopping while south bound traffic has two convoys that stop in specific places along the canal to let the north traffic go through.

We started through the canal around 8:00 this morning at a very slow pace (around 9 knots) and we were the fourth boat in the convoy. You can see in this picture a couple of the ships in front of us. The landscape was fascinating. For the most part, it was unoccupied by people or buildings. Just unending views of sand and stubby trees. Periodically, we would pass cities or small villages along the way and see the fishermen out in their boats. The second picture is rather typical terrain of the canal.

While we were going through the canal, we were holding the Sea Olympics where all of the passengers compete in competitions such as the eating contest done with chopsticks, the relay race that went through the hallways, scavenger hunt, lip syncing contest, synchronized swimming and so much more. All of the decks are divided into seas and the faculty, staff, and lifelong learners were in the Dead Sea. We weren’t the best team, but we also weren’t the worst! The prize for winning the Olympics is first off the ship when we reach Miami.

I didn’t participate in any of the contests but was a great cheerleader for the others. My favorite competitions were the synchronized swimming and lip-syncing contests. I’ve included two pictures – the first is the synchronized swim team for the faculty. They were great and the students loved seeing the Assistant Dean participate. The second picture is of the Lip Syncing competition, again with the faculty. They are the anthropology professor, Dr. Ruth, and her husband Jake. They have to be at least 75 years old and they dressed up as Sonny and Cher and sang “I’ve Got You Babe.” The students loved that one too although they soon kicked our Dead Sea butts with their contributions. The talent was phenomenal!

Eileen represented the Information Spa in the Olympics by playing in the ping pong contest. She had to fight hard to be on the team because the competition amongst the faculty members was fierce! There were so many faculty members interested in playing ping pong that they had to have an elimination tourney before the Olympics to decide who was going to play. Eileen was on a doubles team but, unfortunately, they didn’t win. I’m afraid that I didn’t get any photos of this event.

This evening we had our logistical pre-port meeting for Egypt. There was a lot of talk about appropriate dress and behavior (although the students have never listened to that before so I’m not sure why they bother at this point). We were also told that our trip to Cairo/Luxor/Aswan/Abu Simbel is going to be another grueling one with lots of travel and early mornings (2:30 am). Eileen is going on this one too and we are going to be roommates. We are both incredibly relieved that we aren’t trip leaders on this one because there are 109 people signed up for it. Egads! Should be interesting.