Six class days, no weekend, then Brazil

When waves reach six feet or higher underneath the Explorer, students and faculty feel it. They bump along the hallways to classrooms and, during the lectures, professors steady themselves with a hand on the podium. Students have learned to take notes on swaying desktops.

The biggest difference, however, between a land-based campus and this floating one is there are no weekends. Class meetings alternate between A and B days while at sea, and there are no sessions when the students and their professors hit the ports.

So far in this young semester, classes are well attended, even by those battling seasickness. The occasional bolt out the door is left unexplained; a green pallor tells the story.

Semester at Sea participants really have a great excuse for sleeping through morning classes: To keep sunrise at a normal time, clocks will lurch forward 21 times during the voyage, sometimes losing an hour for five or more days in a row. Overnight, a dreaded 8 a.m. class becomes a torturous 7 a.m. one. It’s the maritime version of Daylight Savings Time meets “Groundhog Day.”

There is another oddity on these hallowed decks: The ship was built in 2002 for a now-bankrupt luxury cruise line. Classrooms are carved out of corners of the chandeliered dining room and lounge areas, and the original nightclub, with its circular dance floor, wrap-around seating and stage lighting, is now the Student Union.

Students also hang out at the library, which was designed to be a bar. They spend free time slumped in bar stools, elbows on the glass counter. The librarian stands behind the counter, guarding sought-after guidebooks on shelves that were to hold liquor bottles. She listens to stories and dispenses advice, as any good bartender would.

Students and faculty spend most of their days at sea together. We eat in the same two dining halls and it’s not unusual for discussions to continue late into the evening.

A few nights ago, many of us were out on the deck lingering under Venus as the ship passed Trinidad. The biology professor talked excitedly about the ecosystem, the oceanography professor about ancient man’s excellent ways of navigating with “chart sticks” and another piped in about the constellations. An instructor who joined us later was slightly regretful about missing Trinidad. “Too bad,” she sighed. “I was getting a pedicure in the spa.”

We then made a pact to not tell loved ones back home about our “work.”

Next: Partying with Brazilian university students, then Archbishop Desmond Tutu comes aboard.