it's rainy in the rainforest

it's been raining, raining, raining today again. Which of course is easily explained by the fact that we are in the tropics & if we could see land (we can't), we'd see rainforests. Since I'm surrounded by academics, including scientists, I asked them my question of the week: at the Jersey shore, when you drive into any of the shore towns you can immediately smell and taste the salt air. How come, when we're in the middle of the Atlantic ocean down here too, you don't have that same smell? There's definitely salt on my skin after I sit outside for a while and there is definitely salt on the handrails outside, but you can't smell that Jersey shore smell. They said it's because it's not the ocean that we were ever smelling. It's the chemical reaction between the ocean and the marsh and the salt deposits on land. The tell-tale smell is actually land decomposition, not the ocean itself. Since there is no land currently anywhere in sight and no marsh, the wind isn't carrying any scent.

All day today, we've been watching masked boobies dive into the ocean to eat the flying fish that are jumping out of our wake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masked_booby). Our amphibian-professor says that they all eventually go blind hitting the water with such force over and over.

Here are a few ship photos. This is one of the longest hallways. It's Deck 4. My deck has more "jags" along the way, this is a student hall (a "sea", as they call it, Arabian Sea, Yellow Sea, etc.). This one is on the way to my favorite outside deck hangout, back by the wake:



Outside, by the wake:



sun & clouds & raininess all at once:



my toes, as I sit by the wake:



Purser's Square, where folks hang out to read email & people-watch:



This photo is of some folks at the library. We're getting an interesting & different clientele at the library than usual. It's not at all quiet. It's a big open space with lots of traffic moving back and forth. People who are looking for quiet spaces to study on the ship (other than their rooms) are a little grumbly. The folks who are hanging out in the library are all people-watcher types. They like being in the hubbub:



This photo is one set of the reserve shelves:



Take note of the metal blinds that are at the top of the photo. They come down over the shelves at night with a not-very-fun-to-use hand crank. They broke today and we couldn't get them up this morning. 4 crew spent nearly all day trying to fix the blinds. Success, finally, around 3:30. Those shelves hold books for professors whose names begin with A-L. Interestingly, we got not a single request for a book from those shelves today. Everyone doing reserve reading had a professor whose name started with M-Z. Odd.

This is Sherri:



computer lab:



faculty/staff lounge:



there's is a Dean's party tonight. Karaoke & everything.

Some folks work in the faculty/staff lounge (Julie) and some folks hang and chat (Mary):



And, finally, here's Dean Mike preparing for the cultural pre-port lecture tonight on Carnival in Brazil:



Mike is the Academic Dean. In his real life, he teaches political & environmental science at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.

Tonight we are "retarding" our clocks an hour. There was much joy amongst the shipboard masses at this announcement.