Entries this day: A_Dream Dos_breakies Lunch Productive State_of_my_Life jonas

A Dream

7:30am LKT Wednesday 11 January 2006

I walked by Kelly's room and discovered I could see into the crew area where the passenger was being disembarked to a different ship. I opened the door to get a better view, and stepped one foot inside to get a much better view. A woman walked by and was all, "you can't be in here," but I stayed for a bit longer. She was like, "seriously; it's better for you to be in a different crew area for an hour than to be here for a minute."

I wondered why this could be true; perhaps because there was so much activity here, the chances of being caught were that much higher.

Dos breakies

9:20am LKT Wednesday 11 January 2006

Went up to Yacht Club for breakfast, and sat by Yuki out on the back deck. Kellie came by and sat with us. Talked about the weather, which has been basically cloudy, except for the day Peter Band had their performance on top deck, and the night Yuki, Rei and I scoped the stars.

Yuki came to the table with her tea and spilled a bit due to the rockiness of the ship, uneven floor, and wind then she got sidetracked inside for a bit and left her tea abandoned, so when I was leaving, I carried it in to her, but she happened to be on the way out just at that time. I gave it to her, and wondered what it would mean if more was spilled. But she balanced the forces to a net normal force relative to the inner lower surface of the cup.

Downstairs I worked on my curriculum a bit, and hated Microsoft because I couldn't use [enter] to make carriage returns below an image. Turns out I had to type visible characters first, and then that apparently switched from picture moving mode to text mode.

The one *good* thing though - I was relatively easily able to draw arrows that pointed up to some lines above. I can't do that easily in html.

Went downstairs to get info on Mombassa Challenge Program, and found myself drawn to Topaz Dining, where I found Kellie chillin' with members of Peter Band. They were just leaving, so I quickly asked Eric if I could get Swahili lyrics of a simple song from him. Told him we want to pre-teach the song to the students so when they teach it, the students will basically already know it.

Ate breakfast (omletted eggs with edamame, sausage weinie, salad, something, and two glasses of orange juice), as Kellie and I said HI to Ley (one of the staff), then Karen and Rie on my way out.

Meeting Karen in a moment to scan docs from Mombassa Challenge Program.

Lunch

1:39pm LKT Wednesday 11 January 2006

Lunch then meeting with Kellie, Laura, Maruan in room 8 about our classes (same general level) and made some (greater than zero) progress in talking about evaluating students' abilities.

Lovely lovely wonderful talk with Carla about our old Nova days and stuff. I'm really glad to be friends with such an awesome woman. I told her I like Rei and she said she could tell.

Productive

4:43pm LKT Wednesday 11 January 2006

Have had a pretty productive day; finished my laundry: Francois is hanging by a noose to dry, and my shorts are being worn by the circular air vent on the ceiling with the legs all pinned closed so they're like an air mattress, plus underwear and shirts are hanging in the normal manner.

Have also scanned the old Mombassa CP papers and gotten some Swahili lyrics to a song we can teach on the CP.

Haven't finished my curriculum for tomorrow, but I think I have enough stuff to pull something together in realtime if I don't look at it again tonight.

Going now to catch the last half of a photography speaker, being translate in part by Rei.

State of my Life

8:34pm LKT Wednesday 11 January 2006

State of My Life Address:

1. GET Classes have started; we've done three days of lessons, and today was a day "off" to catch up on lesson planning or whatever.

2. My M class called themselves Fantastic Rabbits. There were five students for the first two days: George, Kelly, Alice, Michelle, Carol. (I had each student give themselves English names.) On the third day two more students came: Angelina (who looks a bit like Ms Jolie) and Nikki. I've heard rumors that one or both of them will not stay in the class, but they are just rumors and speculation.

3. My N class called themselves Fighting Goats. Six female students: Jerry, Emily, Carol, Sugar, Eye, and Ann.

   They are nearly as shy as my shy girl class from last voyage.

4. I'm caught up on all my primary tasks of preparing and teaching lessons.

5. Ain't spent no money; ain't kissed no women on the ship.

   Those are not meant to be double negatives; I really haven't done either.

6. I have, however, flirted a bit with a woman in Yacht Club, whose name I can't necessarily spell correctly in English, but I think it's something like Alyona.

7. We three in 3027 have gone on one triple date with the three girls in 3029, and will give them another letter tonight. (the one requesting numeric 'data')

8. Today was the first nicely sunny day on the ship.

9. So far, we've been to Singapore and Vietnam.

10. All the ports past this will be new for me.

11. I've got 1/2 of one chapter left in _Xenocide_.

jonas

11:41pm LKT Wednesday 11 January 2006

Had a 2 hour all English session with Jonas G-something, of Zimbabwe, who has been working for unconditional, complete and immediate debt cancellation for (African) countries, plus gender equality issues in a way that sounded quite similar to my men's group.

I asked if his organization worked with other organizations around the world and was somewhat saddened by his answer that most of the other "men's groups" he had found were not groups that meshed with what his organization was trying to do. He cited a group of fathers in London who have been characterized as doing public performances to try and win (partial) custody of their children.

I will email him info on Mankind Project.

The first portion of his talk, about debt reduction was nearly putting me to sleep, but the gender issue stuff woke me up.