On the briny seas!

This is what 0 latitude, 0 longitude looks like. Not it, but looks like it.  We crossed the equator on Friday, 2/11 but won't celebrate Neptune's Day until after we leave Mauritius bound for India.  The Captain announced that if we would look over the starboard side we would see the meeting of the longitue and latitude.  People actually rushed to the side to see the X marks the spot!  The sea was silken, shimmering and smooth and we enjoyed the smooth ride for about 4 days.

In addition to Global Studies, which everyone must take, I am now in John Cerrone's class on the United Nations and Human Rights.  He is brilliant, a Notre Dame law graduate, and he never looks at his notes.  He also makes the students do a lot of talking. The age of computers has changed the way professors lecture.  Bob, for instance, puts all of his lectures on ship's computers for students to read and he rarely refers to them, expecting the students to have read the lectures, he continues from there. However, we have all decided that probably 25% of the students are here to party and go on their own trips, not the SAS trips.  For many students, the courses will not transfer  to their university, so they don't care what grade they get as long as they pass.

                                                                

 Every day seems to roll  into another, breakfast, read, go to class, lunch, read, go to LLL class, dinner and movies or special events.  Many have been sick since Ghana with pretty serious bacterial upsets but so far we have been lucky.  Once the seas got rough yesterday, we both felt queasy.  But we take our seasick pills and we're fine.
We had a tour of the kitchen yesterday with John the first Officer or Hotelier.  He is a character, also English, as is the Captain, Jeremy.  The menus repeat once a month, although to me it seems like we have the same thing every day: pasta, curried something, salad, sandwiches, and some sort of meat.  The soups are the best.  There is also a bar/restaurant on the 7th deck where the students hang out, sunbath and does who knows what.  The kitchen keeps track of food thrown away, 40 some lbs a day for 1000 passengers, isn't bad.  We carry tons of water and he told us that when we arrive in India, we will be using mineral water for drinking water and for bathing, because they can't provide fresh water and we can't make water in the port.

We took our onboard kids for pizza and enjoyed hearing their experiences in Ghana and what they're going  to do inSouth Africa.  Most are going on independent trips, not SAS

trips as they are cheaper and they can go where they want to go.  We stick to SAS, dependable, air-conditioned busses, etc.  Some girls are going cage diving, diving with sharks!  This is actually prohibited and any injury will not be cover by  our medical insurance.

We have Rhoda Kadalie on board, a South African from Capetown, who is politically active, and has lectured several times on the good and bad about Capetown:  high HIV rate 85%., reducing life expectancy to 40, down 20 years in the last 10 years; high crime rate.  Mbeci, former president, denied that HIV existed, and refused to make antiviral available.  At least now, some drugs are available.

So here we are. Thursday morning, in Capetown, after a terribly rough night.  None of us got any sleep but then were told that we could not get into  our berth in Capetown as the winds were too strong at the harbor entrance for the ship to safely land!  So here we are going around in circles in the South Atlantic waiting for the winds to die down!  Rick has already missed  his Habitat for Humanity project and my guess is that we'll be here all day!  We better not miss our safari tomorrow!