Maeve:  We're going on a ship! With Victor! and Elizabeth! and [extra note of excitement here] Josiah! We'll wear short sleeves!


Maeve has been saying this for months now. All of it is true. But it needs some explication.

We are indeed going on a ship on a round-the-world voyage. We will leave Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 17, and travel to Dominica, Brazil, Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Singapore, Vietnam, China, and Japan, before returning back to the US in early May. The ship is the MV Explorer, pictured below, which functions as the floating, traveling campus for the Semester-at-Sea program. We haven't seen the MV Explorer yet, but all the reports from those who have been on it are encouraging; it's a big ship, built about ten years ago as a cruise ship, and then at some point after that acquired by the Institute for Shipboard Education. We hear that it's nice, and that the shipboard experience is one of the highlights of the voyage and the experience.

With Victor! and Elizabeth!  Victor and Elizabeth are our friends and colleagues in the English department, who will be going on the voyage as well. Victor, in fact, is the impresario of the entire venture, as he will be serving as Academic Dean for the voyage. We're all slightly awed at the work Victor has done in putting the faculty and the curriculum together, and grateful to him for inviting us along. Elizabeth will be teaching on the voyage, offering courses in World Theater and World Prayer that should be really fascinating.

and [extra note of excitement] Josiah! Josiah is Victor and Elizabeth's nine-year-old son. He will be on the voyage as well, of course. Maeve adores him.

We'll wear short sleeves!  Well yes, we will. We will be traveling in the southern hemisphere for much of the voyage, where it will be warm and summer-like, even hot in a number of places. There will be sunblock for Maeve's fair skin.