Morocco Almost Ready to Rock

This is a belated posting as I put it together a few weeks back and just today had the time to return to it as I can only access the Internet at certain locations on the ship and the students manage to find me and ask questions that they say which will take a minute but end up taking us into the late night; Alicia and I actually love these "interruptions" as it's cool to hear about their cultural experiences, insights, and to waltz with them on questions on their progress and grades.

Morocco was a blend of old and new, familiar and weird, tasty and then odd (especially the big eel fillet smothered with caramelized onions and almost recognizable vegetables). We docked at the industrial port of Casablanca as it was cheaper but a long way from the gate leading to the city. Thew ship was surrounded by container cranes that surrounded us like sentinels. Casablanca sure looked a lot better in the Bogart movie than it did when we sat foot on the eroding streets that were jammed with motor bikes, scooters, and maniacal cab and bus drivers--not a place to rent a car unless the death wish is winning over common sense. On our first full day at port I co-led a student field trip to the largest Coca-Cola plant in Morocco and the second largest in North Africa where we met with the General Manager who was a well educated Moroccan who spent several years in Atlanta and answered some great questions posed by the students, such as how they rationalized using so much water to make their products in a land with severe water shortages. It turns out the Coca Cola started off when the US Army built a bottling plant in North Africa to provide thirsty soldiers during WWII with a taste of home.

In any event, we took a couple of field trips to Marrakesh and then to some "real" Moroccan cities along the coast. Marrakesh reminded me of Mexico City around 1960 with the streets filled with people, many of them recently from the country, and scores of mini-shops selling everything from hand-made shoes to sheep heads and stalls filled with an incredible assortment of spices next to shops selling all types of herbal/local cures. We did the "tourista" thing and visited the Mosque (which we disbelievers were not allowed to enter), the Palace, the souk, and the Medina. The Medina was incredible as it reminded us of the Zocalo in Mexico City as it was filled with people selling their wares and entertaining tourists with monkeys on leashes, snake charmers (think they were charming the local version of garden snakes rather than cobras), women ready to henna and sprinkle glitter on "ancient" designs configured on wrists and arms, all of this happening concurrently.

We left Marakesh the next day on a bus and traveled along a two lane road to the coast and the trip should have taken an hour but took almost three as the roads were in either totally disrepair or being repaired. Along the way we learned about the unique Argon trees and their fruit that is harvested via goat droppings and which is converted into elixirs with great curative powers, from diarrhea to cancer to dandruff to bad breath. We held out from the sales pitch but enjoyed watching the female "co-op" workers grind the nuts into a paste and then an oil. We finally arrived at Essaouira which was a beach side community where Jimi Hendrix and Cat Stevens did their thing a couple of generations ago. That's where most of the students rebelled at eating fresh eel but I managed to have a BIG chunk. After lunch we headed to the waterfront to see the men unload their fish and literally fight over prices and freshness--great to see the local color.

We shared a last meal at Rick's cafe (some enterprising French woman opened this over-priced but sort of cool place) where we had an OK meal and enjoyed a very nice jazz quartet with ex-pats ranging in age from 20 to 80; they played pretty well and it decreased the pain of paying premium meal prices for "Planet Hollywood" fare.

Viva Espana!

We landed in Cadiz, Espana, on September 5th after a week at sea and it was great to land at Europe's oldest settled city to experience land, wonderful seafood, and good to great wine. We woke up before dawn on arrival to watch the tugboat nudge us into the pier that literally led us into the old part of the city. After checking out the local mercado and munching on some sinfully tasty chicharrones we took a couple of tours; the first being a pretty interesting city tour by bus and foot that took us to some wonderful museums, churches, and historic buildings. We found out that Cadiz was first settled by the Phoenicians and that it became the primary commercial center for trade with the Americas after the river route to Seville silted up. The second tour that evening took us to a small town outside Cadiz where we were "entertained" by a fourteen year old matador intern who did a pretty good job of irritating a two year old bull. Then we had a high energy flamenco program that was very entertaining and where we probably took a hundred plus photos--and you can see some of the "good" ones on Alicia's shutterfly album.

The next day we took a trip to Arcos and Ronda which are two of the famous "white cities" and were lucky enough to see the end of the week long annual celebration in Ronda that commemorates the birth of bull fighting. These were wonderful cities and it was fascinating to hear how these Phoenician born cities were made great by Rome and taken to even great heights of art and science by the Moors. It was one heck of a second day in Cadiz. The next day we took the very efficient and fast train (it got up to about 100 mph and makes our inefficient Amtrak look like an anemic sister train) to Sevilla where we walked the city in hundred plus heat. Still, we enjoyed seeing the cathedral, the Alcazar, and the old Jewish
Quarter where we had a darn good paella and some luscious white wine from a varietal that was new to both of us. On our last day in Spain I co-led a field trip to a wind farm and a solar installation that looked like the set from a science fiction movie. The wind farm produces about 120 megawatts, enough to power a mid-sized city and actually makes electricity at a competitive rate--the wind powering these behemoths started off in the Sahara and picked up force crossing the straits of Gibraltar and was blowing so strong at times that they had to lock in the blades to prevent equipment damage. Then we went to a solar farm where the energy produced cost ten times more than the wind farm but at least they are trying to test and make use of this technology. Our guide for the wind and solar farms is a "bud" of Al Gore, a nuclear physicist, and the author of the most current text on global climate change in Spain. Wow, it was like a year of experiences in a week in Spain and now we are heading to Morocco after spending most of the day refueling in Gibraltar.

Attention Mrs. Elder's Class

Dear students of Mrs. Elder: I promised Mrs. Elder that we would keep you posted on our trip around the world. We left Norfolk, Virginia on August 24th and spent three days following the US coastline to Halifax, Canada (can you find it on the map?). Halifax is a wonderful seaside city and we spent an afternoon climbing up a small hill to the Citadel which was a fort built by the English at the request of the Queen of England (know her name?). It took twenty-eight years to build the fort and it never fired a shot as it was considered impregnable and would have easily wiped out any attacking French or Indian forces.

Alicia (my wife; that's her in front of the ship just before we left Norfolk) and I left Halifax on August 28th and have now completed a full week at sea. During that entire time I saw one container ship and maybe spotted a whale but hard to tell given the distance we were from whatever it was. This is a BIG and DEEP ocean and at one point our ship traveled over some ocean canyons that were almost twenty thousand feet deep. The water is incredibly blue and fairly cold as each day they tell us the temperature; yesterday it was 68 and today it was almost 70 but still too cold to enjoy a swim if we were to fall overboard. Speaking of which, on a cruise last year on this ship one of the students was partying too much and fell overboard at two in the morning and it took the ship more than thirty minutes to turn around and it was a miracle that one of the students spotted him furiously swimming towards the ship. He was picked up and was "expelled" although I suspect he will never forget that swim.

Well, I should have began this message to you by noting that I am a teacher, like Mrs. Elder and that this ship has over five hundred college students from more than two hundred colleges from throughout the United States. This should be an exciting, fun, and great educational learning adventure for every student and I hope that some day you could join in for a similar adventure.

Tomorrow we reach our first port in Spain and it is Cadiz which is the city that the Spanish galleons came to loaded with the riches of Mexico and South America in the 1600s and 1700s. The people of Cadiz brag that Columbus is buried in one of their cathedrals, but plenty of other cities also say the same--maybe they divided him up?

After Cadiz we sail for Casablanca, Morocco, and I will try to keep you all informed of our adventures. We will finish our sea adventure in mid-December so stay tuned for more updates. Please send us your comments and questions and I promise to get back to you but it may be tricky at times as the Internet on the ship is linked to a satellite and when the weather is bad we can't send or receive messages. In the mean time please be good to each other and pay close attention to Mrs. Elder as she is probably the world's greatest teacher. Regards, Teacher Dan.

Land At Last at Dawn

An incredible first week at sea with over 500 students from 200 colleges and universities along with a fascinating bunch of professors, staff, and assorted kinder, including a darling set of "no fear" twin eighteen month old baby girls--all of us getting our sea legs and adjusting to shipboard food that does not remind us of home but is filling none the less.

Here's the scoop. Alicia and I are like newly weds sharing a cabin that is probably ten by eight feet but it does have a window on the sea. We spent the first couple of days learning to navigate around each other and figuring out how to use our micro shower and store our belongings so that when the ship rocked and rolled everything more or less stayed in place.

I'm teaching three classes and the students appear to be genuinely engaged or are doing a great job of projecting interest. My favorite class is the "hot of the press and make it up as you do it" course on Sustainable Development. Its my smallest class with nineteen students but it also has drawn a group of five life-long learners, including a couple of "real" experts and advocates who live and breathe sustainable development. The other two classes are "International Marketing" and "Operations Management" and I have refocused both classes on all of the nations we are visiting. Today the first four student teams for these two classes did a magnificent job of telling us about GDP/per capita, wind and solar energy initiatives, cultural norms for business dealings, corruption, and all manner of other information that will prime the students before each port visit. I don't think I've worked this hard since I first began teaching but it's a trip and I'm actually learning how to learn again about new stuff that matters. Also, the photo at upper left was taken on "Mismatch" day which was the first dance for the students and the guys with me are definitely "studs".

Now, here's Alicia.

It has been a fascinating and exciting week. We have attended many meetings, watched some great films about Casablanca and Spain and grown tired of the food and worked out too. Tomorrow we arrive in Cadiz and we are off on our various excursions, can't wait!

Please check my shutterfly site for pictures of our trip.

OK buds, time for us to check our prep list for tomorrow's adventures--including which Spanish vino we should taste and where to get some great cheese.

At Sea At Last

We boarded the ship in Norfolk on Monday and were glad to escape the incredible humidity; 100% humidity and 100 degrees equal 1 gazillion degrees of discomfort. The MV Explorer, our seafaring campus, initially looked BIG to us but after arriving at Halifax we felt dwarfed by the two monster cruise ships berthed next to us--we carry a full complement of 1,200 and the mama ships moored next to us seemed like floating cities with 4-5,000 passengers and crew--these ships looked and felt like floating Las Vegas islands.



The first four days on the ship were jammed with orientation sessions, ranging from emergency escape drills where we hunkered next to our designated lifeboats to discussions on life-long learning, global studies, how to deal with phony "good" water drawn from polluted sources, dealing with rich/spoiled students who don't attend classes, and a host of other important topics that we have already pushed to the back of our expanded and ready to explode frontal lobes.



We landed at Halifax this morning and given the case that we finally had a reasonable night's sleep we missed the bagpiper duet that welcomed our ship at 8; apparently the big ships had a much bigger reception with gobs of pipers but those are the breaks. After our morning session on how to deal with emergency medical situations ("don't go native with food in Ghana or suffer the consequences, etc.") we had a lovely breakfast with two of our new buds, Bernie and Elaine who head up the Service Learning and Life-Long Learners programs, and then took a bus ride to the Wal-Mart located at the opposite end of the city. We made the pilgrimage to buy firm pillows, chocolate, tea, and other items that we neglected to pack.



Halifax is pretty cool and reminds us of a compressed Victoria with the city perched on some puffy lips around the harbor. After the Wal-Mart stop we headed to the Five Fishermen restaurant where we bumped into about twenty of our new Explorer buds. Alicia had a fabulous lobster dinner but the real hit of the evening was the endless supply of local mussels that were very yummy and fresh (hauled out of the ocean this morning) and the best part is that we could eat all the mussels we wanted at "no" additional cost as they were part of the salad bar. I stopped at about 100 or so as I didn't want to spoil my appetite.



We probably walked five or six miles today and made it back to the ship in time for the reception for the parents of the students, none of the students were at the reception as they come on board tomorrow. It was a very well done reception with some great food (none of which we had seen or eaten to date but were glad to acknowledge as coming from the ship's kitchens) and about 300 plus excited and worried parents. Alicia and I mingled and met with several parents and committed to being surrogate parents to about a half dozen students, including a couple of students from Newport Beach and a Latina from Denver whose father almost genuflected to us when we agreed to meet and befriend her.



Tomorrow we sail for Cadiz and we will test out our new pillows tonight--thankful for small blessings like firm pillows and great ones like the adventure we have started and can only get better.

Bon Voyage Feasts with the Spenuzza, Rodriguez, Hedrick, and Marquez Families

We have to go around the world more often as the food and drink send-offs have have been great albeit we are straining at the waist and have yet to board the MS Voyager! First, Pete and Connie Spenuzza graciously hosted us last weekend for a great bon voyage send-off brunch at Sapphire Grill in Laguna Beach--the food and conversation were wonderful and it was great to be with them knowing that Pete had been a student on one of the earlier/earliest voyages back in the 60s. This will be the 100th voyage and how very cool to know that Pete had blazed the trail that we will follow in a week.

Then Steves and Cindy Rodriguez had us over for an incredible dinner of the most succulent fish tacos, sangria, and conversation that was both celestial and educational as they filled us in on their adventures in Vietnam and Japan--great to have such beautiful young friends pave the trail for our upcoming treks.

If that were not enough we were hosted to another fabulous brunch at the Hedrick household with the core family on Sunday with custom made omelets by our Nekane and Lisa (our girls), more than a few mimosas, and an announcement about the first baby coming to Viviana and Jeff--a phenomenal way to start our voyage in less than a week. We enjoyed this feast under the perky eyes of Diego and Dora, the intrepid explorers whose tradition we will carry on. So, we will waddle onto the ship with promises of waking up before dawn to hit the workout gym and race around the decks at least a hundred times before breakfast. Life is good with family and friends, especially when we have champagne, omelets, and good conversation to share.

We have one day left before we leave for our voyage and dinner tonight was spent with great friends Frank and Anita. A wonderful evening at Phlight enjoying good food, wine and conversation. So, we leave on Friday and hope we can waddle onto the ship and find room for all of our "stuff".

One week to go and we're getting into the high anxiety/gear mode; did we remember to pack for hot/cold weather, are all of the monthly statements/bills migrated to e-mode, will the girls keep my garden plants and pots alive, will my remaining wine collection be happy in a someone else's wine closet, will we be happy sleeping on a micro-bed, and on and on. Tune it to see how it turns out if you give a hoot.