The exciting event of today was the embarkation of the students. Most of them had arrived in London and were bused to the ship in waves. Lots of staff and faculty helped check them in. I have to say that this seems to be a group of very nice, polite students. Seventy-two percent are females, so some guys are very happy right now.
The students were cheered onto the ship by the Resident Directors as is the custom, and they were checked in by staff in the Union.
I had gotten up early at 6 am to watch the sun rise and watch a few cruise ships come into port. This is still not a full ocean sunrise, but it will do. BTW, that cruise ship dwarfs our ship.
As I headed back to the library to get some early morning work done, I met the crew bringing our books at 6:20. It does pay to get up early. I had them unpacked before breakfast, and everything
arrived save and sound. We got all the records loaded in the catalog by lunch, so it was a very good day with a lot of stress removed.
The faculty managed to fill my afternoon with lots of special requests, but a happy faculty is a good faculty.
And it wouldn't be an embarkation day without the obligatory lifeboat drill. Nancy gave our group high marks compared to some we have participated in. I'm still wondering what happened to the guy whose name they kept calling. A few people got in the wrong group, so that make it last longer, but that's why they have drills.
Then the Captain re-positioned the ship to a different dock. I'm sure it was to make room for another ship to take the one we were using and was probably less expensive. We are still in port for another day while student orientation happens tomorrow. I like this idea of not sailing quite yet, because it lets everyone acclimate a little more, and, hopefully, there will be fewer instances of sea sickness.
An evening convocation ended a long day, but we are one big community now (although we did have few moments of "who let all those students on our ship").
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