Just wanted to say hello! We are sitting up in the lounge at the front of the ship peering out at our first international port... JAPAN!! We had an awesome pre-port community lecture last night, where I ended up in tears after a few of our students presented our two Japanese interport students with thank you gifts for joining us from Honolulu to Kobe. I should explain... at each port we pickup one or two international students who are from the port to follow. For example, we picked up two students from Kobe, Japan while we were in Honolulu so that they could travel with us and share their knowledge en route to Japan. In Japan, we'll be picking up a student from China who will travel with us through Hong Kong.
Anyway -- the excitement is extremely high this morning. At barely 5am I heard loud cheers in the hallways as folks were beginning to see the lights of Japan. It's about 6am right now, and practically the entire ship is up & awake peering over the railings in anticipation. It is still unbelievable to me that we will be arriving in JAPAN in less than 2 hours. Hello? We will be in Japan? How amazingly privileged and lucky are we?
A few quick stories before I sign off. Yesterday we had a tour of "The Bridge"-- the main control area of the ship. It was very interesting to see all of the equipment and the 24-hour watch schedule for the officers. I've heard stories about some of the areas in which it is difficult for the officers to manuveur the ship... Kobe can be one of them because of all the fishing boats, some of which are not expecting a giant cruise ship to be appearing in the early morning hours. Another difficult area is when we come around Malasia & Singapore because the straights are so narrow. It will be fun!?
We ended our evening last night with a staff party thrown by the Executive Dean -- chips and salsa and margaritas! What more could you ask for? Well... of course this lead to some more interesting activities. The faculty/staff lounge was transformed into a night club last night -- fog machine and all!!! -- and practically all of the staff and some of the faculty peformed karaoke until about midnight. Some of the classic performances were "Copa Cabana," "Piano Man," "I Got You Babe," and the ever-classic full staff rendition of "YMCA." It was HILARIOUS. I was dragging a little this morning, but it's pretty easy to get excited.
Our plan for the day is to walk into Kobe and explore the city for the afternoon, and then a bunch of us are going to a baseball game in Osaka!!! I'm also hoping to ride the giant ferris wheel in Osaka... good times!
Joe says "hi!"
He will be posting our pictures from our bridge tour and from karaoke later...
Love You All!!! :)
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