Permission to come Aboard

Permission to come Aboard

    Embarkation day was pretty unspectacular.  After boarding the ship in San Diego with all Staff and Faculty, we sailed down to beautiful Ensenda Mexico to pick up the college students who were bussed down from San Diego (about 50 miles).   While in beautiful Ensenada Mexico I learned 2 very valuable lessons: 1. No one should ever refer to beautiful Ensenada Mexico as beautiful,  its not, so ill stop now.  2nd: It’s actually legal for a restaurant to refuse to accept their own local currency and take “only dollares”.  They said NO TO PESOS!  Why did we pick up the kids Ensenada you ask? Like the origins of the word Hoosier, many stories persist, though none truly to my liking or verified as fact.  I’ve heard stories ranging from evading a hefty U.S. embarkation tax to embarking in a foreign port to allow the ship to avoid reporting any on board illness to the U.S. Center for Disease Control.  I’m hoping for the former.  Regardless, one day in Ensenada was plenty.  While the 600+ students were sitting at the boarder for nearly 3 hours, the faculty and staff were able to hop off the ship and explore the town.  I had been to Ensenada on a cruise about 10 years ago. At the time there was nearly no tourist infrastructure, simply a boarder town on the water, allowing cruise lines to evade a hefty U.S. embarkation tax or avoid reporting any onboard illness to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, whichever story you choose to believe.  Never before has the old saying about putting lipstick on a pig been more true.  Ensenada now has a cute touristy strip, a down town, and even a shuttle from the cruise terminal to the “main shopping area”.  Well, the shuttle broke down while we were on it, the tourist area had more vacancies then operating businesses, and the down town was over run by children selling ‘chikle’ and women selling those damn bobbing head frogs things. The absolute icing on the cake, or well, guacamole on the taco was when they refused a friend's attempt at communication in Spanish, and actually rejected her payment in pesos, saying the only accepted U.S. ‘Dollares’.  You really shouldn't put lipstick on a pig.  

Immediately after boarding the ship, each student went through a rigorous checking in process.  They would hand over their passport to the purser, get their cabin assignments, pick up class materials, turn in their medication, and lastly meet the medical team (including Gabby) face to face.  The medical team, being the caring group that they are had three bins set up at their booth.  Bin 1: cookies, who says no to cookies.  Bin 2: condoms, some students shamefully grabbed a bunch, some politely declined the offer, and some sheepishly took one, so as to avoid acting rude.  Bin 3: Sea sickness pills.  Because I was not part of the checking in process, I hung out with the medical team for a large part of the day.  I sat there, didn't introduce myself to any of the students, but secretly judged the number of cookies and condoms each student took.  What amazed me was that nearly every student checking in that afternoon had the exact same reaction to the sea sickness pills.  “ Nah, I’m good, I don’t get sea sick, I was on a boat once on the great lakes and I was totally fine ”. The medical team, God bless there hearts tried to insist early on, asking questions like, “are you sure, have you ever crossed the pacific on a ship designed to casually sail between Greek Islands? or things like, ‘better safe then sorry’… I’m pretty sure the sheer amount of rejection 4.5 hours into what was supposed to a be 2 hour process really got to the team, and by the end of the day they were thinking, ‘ok little bastards, I told you so, clean up your own damn vomit”.  Spoiler alert the students needed the sea sickness medication, and the needed way sooner then any of them had expected.  

 Because the students were held up at the boarded for nearly three hours longer than expected, the sunset sail away went by the wayside as well.  In lieu of  a dramatic, symbolic, emotional sunlit send off, we were treated with a P.A. announcement while sitting in the pitch black port of Ensenada that went something like this: “ Good evening Voyagers.  Welcome aboard.   As you can see, we have cast off”!  How about a little Mother F^%&ing heads up! This is supposed to be the symbolic moment when students and staff alike literally let go of their lives at home and embarking on the journey of a lifetime.  There’s supposed to be cheers, tears, and GoPro footage from every angle imaginable (side note, I'm pretty sure GoPro's out number humans on this vessel 2:1, it doesn't make sense, I know) .  All sappiness aside, this is supposed to be the quintessential marketing moment for Semester at Sea.  Something tells me we are going to be asked to awkwardly recreate this “emotional moment” while leaving a port in the near future.  “As you can see, we have cast off”, come on!   

And on the third day, God said let there be seas, and oh yes, there were seas. Stay tuned...

and now a motivational boat/travel quote sponsored by your favorite psychologist and mine: Gabrielle Gotta