I've told myself every night this week that I'd go to bed earlier. However, now it's 1:30am and I'm just sitting down to write this. I know I'll regret it in the morning when my roommates get up early to go on a run or when the majority of my house is making themselves a nice breakfast.
To recap on the past 10 days...
Last week we had a meeting with our captain about what to pack for sea, and he gave us more information about what life will be like on the ship. It was extremely helpful, but also just made me even more excited to finally start the voyage!
Last Friday, we went on a class field trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum. I didn't really know what to expect but when I walked in and saw this, I knew it would be a cool day:
We went to the museum because although New Bedford, Massachusetts was the "hub" of the whaling industry in the U.S., a large part of it took place on the other side of the states-- the Pacific Ocean. Whaling obviously had a huge impact on the whale populations, but also the people in Pacific Islands and surrounding continents. Although I was probably supposed to take more "relevant to our studies" points away from the tour of the museum, I found these two things the most exciting: 1. Turns out people from the Azores (Portugal) had a large role in these whaling voyages. 2. A half size whaling ship replica that we could explore:
Apparently, in the Atlantic, the Azores were one of the main stops for whaling ships-- and often many Azoreans got on board to be apart of the crew. The reason I found this fascinating was that part of my Dad's side of the family, quite a few generations back, was from the Azores. Although I don't know much about the Azores, nor Portugal for that matter, it is a part of me-- and I've grown up in a small community that strangely has a lot of Azoreans. It was interesting to learn that New Bedford is kind of like the Delta in that way, in that there still are a lot of people from the Azores there too. After learning all this, I couldn't help but think maybe seafaring is actually in my blood, and maybe I might be good at this tall ship sailing... Well we'll see.
After the museum, we walked down to one of the fishing docks to talk to some scallop fisherman. What in the world does this have to do with our program? Not really anything at all, except that it gave us practice at talking to local people and asking the right questions. This will be a lot of what we are doing at port stops during our voyage to collect information for our research papers.
Speaking of research papers....
During our short 4 weeks here in Woods Hole, although we are tempted by the beach everyday, we have lots of work to get done before we leave. The bulk of the work is three substantially long papers for three different classes. Two of the papers we will be finishing up at the very end of our program in New Zealand, after we collect information from the islands we visit. These are for our Maritime History & Culture Class and Marine Environmental History. My two topics are (broadly) Surf Tourism and for the other, Waste Management. So, stayed tuned for lots of pictures of surf and trash!
Despite the fact that I really enjoy my paper topics, this is going to be a rough next week-- we all keep realizing how much other stuff we have to get done and well... I guess we'll get it done.
Tonight I have been in the library trying to start outlining things. I thought I was going to walk back to our cabin a while ago, but then I got the urge to move around. I needed to dance, and I know it sounds weird to people who don't dance but it helps with life :) I've been wanting to dance for the past week, but it's kind of hard to do that with 40 other students around the campus. Dance isn't really something like soccer where you could practice it outside and no one would care-- because if you just started dancing, people would be weird about it. Alas, I find myself in our small little library, late at night, blasting good music, finally moving, and feeling refreshed-- apparently enough to write all this. So there you have it, that's what I've been up to and I probably won't write again until this portion of the program has come to an end!
Interesting things of the week:
~Feeling proud of my home institution's Environmental Studies department for giving an awesome view on this field, and letting me feel like I actually know some things here!
To recap on the past 10 days...
Last week we had a meeting with our captain about what to pack for sea, and he gave us more information about what life will be like on the ship. It was extremely helpful, but also just made me even more excited to finally start the voyage!
Last Friday, we went on a class field trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum. I didn't really know what to expect but when I walked in and saw this, I knew it would be a cool day:
We went to the museum because although New Bedford, Massachusetts was the "hub" of the whaling industry in the U.S., a large part of it took place on the other side of the states-- the Pacific Ocean. Whaling obviously had a huge impact on the whale populations, but also the people in Pacific Islands and surrounding continents. Although I was probably supposed to take more "relevant to our studies" points away from the tour of the museum, I found these two things the most exciting: 1. Turns out people from the Azores (Portugal) had a large role in these whaling voyages. 2. A half size whaling ship replica that we could explore:
Apparently, in the Atlantic, the Azores were one of the main stops for whaling ships-- and often many Azoreans got on board to be apart of the crew. The reason I found this fascinating was that part of my Dad's side of the family, quite a few generations back, was from the Azores. Although I don't know much about the Azores, nor Portugal for that matter, it is a part of me-- and I've grown up in a small community that strangely has a lot of Azoreans. It was interesting to learn that New Bedford is kind of like the Delta in that way, in that there still are a lot of people from the Azores there too. After learning all this, I couldn't help but think maybe seafaring is actually in my blood, and maybe I might be good at this tall ship sailing... Well we'll see.
After the museum, we walked down to one of the fishing docks to talk to some scallop fisherman. What in the world does this have to do with our program? Not really anything at all, except that it gave us practice at talking to local people and asking the right questions. This will be a lot of what we are doing at port stops during our voyage to collect information for our research papers.
Speaking of research papers....
During our short 4 weeks here in Woods Hole, although we are tempted by the beach everyday, we have lots of work to get done before we leave. The bulk of the work is three substantially long papers for three different classes. Two of the papers we will be finishing up at the very end of our program in New Zealand, after we collect information from the islands we visit. These are for our Maritime History & Culture Class and Marine Environmental History. My two topics are (broadly) Surf Tourism and for the other, Waste Management. So, stayed tuned for lots of pictures of surf and trash!
Despite the fact that I really enjoy my paper topics, this is going to be a rough next week-- we all keep realizing how much other stuff we have to get done and well... I guess we'll get it done.
Tonight I have been in the library trying to start outlining things. I thought I was going to walk back to our cabin a while ago, but then I got the urge to move around. I needed to dance, and I know it sounds weird to people who don't dance but it helps with life :) I've been wanting to dance for the past week, but it's kind of hard to do that with 40 other students around the campus. Dance isn't really something like soccer where you could practice it outside and no one would care-- because if you just started dancing, people would be weird about it. Alas, I find myself in our small little library, late at night, blasting good music, finally moving, and feeling refreshed-- apparently enough to write all this. So there you have it, that's what I've been up to and I probably won't write again until this portion of the program has come to an end!
Interesting things of the week:
~Feeling proud of my home institution's Environmental Studies department for giving an awesome view on this field, and letting me feel like I actually know some things here!
~ Also kudos to UCSC for making the one hill we have at SEA seem like a breezeeee after all those torturous stairs and paths on UCSC's campus.
~I've really come to appreciate that we have to plan our dinners together here and eat together almost every night. Turns out it's actually pretty great to be forced to be together. Our house even decided to do "highs and lows of the day" at each dinner.
~No matter how cool our teachers are, they are still college teachers and know how to confuse and overwhelm us.
~Some of us watched the short documentary, Disruption. After, we had an awesome climate change conversation amongst each other and some of our faculty, just for fun. I loved it.
~Today we found out that the famous Hokule'a should be in Pago Pago near our ship, the Robert C. Seamans while we are there!! If you don't know what it is, check it out and follow its world voyage! (http://www.hokulea.com/) Truly wishing I could have called my Dad and told him about it, but yet again I think he had a hand in making it happen anyway... <3
~I've really come to appreciate that we have to plan our dinners together here and eat together almost every night. Turns out it's actually pretty great to be forced to be together. Our house even decided to do "highs and lows of the day" at each dinner.
~No matter how cool our teachers are, they are still college teachers and know how to confuse and overwhelm us.
~Some of us watched the short documentary, Disruption. After, we had an awesome climate change conversation amongst each other and some of our faculty, just for fun. I loved it.
~Today we found out that the famous Hokule'a should be in Pago Pago near our ship, the Robert C. Seamans while we are there!! If you don't know what it is, check it out and follow its world voyage! (http://www.hokulea.com/) Truly wishing I could have called my Dad and told him about it, but yet again I think he had a hand in making it happen anyway... <3
Hokule'a -- Polynesian voyaging canoe
~LTK
It all sounds so awesome. Love the "highs and lows of the day" dinner gathering ritual. A good practice for all people to consider.
ReplyDeleteYour Dad is smiling, Big.