Day 13: Lost Day

Location: Just past the International Date Line

Ever wanted to just skip Monday? I have. And Monday, January 21, 2013 is a day that we, passengers on the MV Explorer, never experienced. Overnight we crossed the International Date Line. We changed our calendars but not our clocks. We moved our calendars one day forward. I will only experience 364 days this year.

On the ship, today, January 22, 2013 was designated as a study day. Basically that just means that we do not have any scheduled classes to attend.

I had decided that heck, this will be my day to sleep in! I will just skip breakfast and wake up when I wake up. Then the thought passed through my head that I have to have food in order to take my medicine. Crap! I have to get up early for breakfast. I had breakfast this morning with Sara's friends on the ship.

After breakfast, I trotted on down the hall to Shelley and Lauren's room. They were watching The Little Mermaid for about the sixth time in a matter of 24 hours. I haven't seen the movie in a long time but it is so much fun to get to watch these movies! I also had to watch it (on my own time, in my room on the ship) for my Diverse Cultures class.

We decided that we ought to try and be real productive today. Lauren and I went up to the Garden Lounge (dining hall) to study. I think trying to do homework or study there is similar to going to Starbucks. There are kids running around playing games, people chatting, people drinking their coffees, and then people actually trying to get work done.

During lunch, the Assistant Dean made an announcement over the intercom telling everyone on the ship that they need to go down to the Purser's office and pick up a packet. Enclosed in the packet were 10 immigration forms necessary for each of the countries that we will be visiting. The Assistant Dean told us that these forms would take a generous amount of time to complete. Boy was he right! It took us almost three hours to fill out the forms properly. There went our plan to be good little children today.

Tonight's Explorer's Seminar was about Asia. It was an overview of what we might expect as we approach Asia –everything from the culture to the religion to the food, etc. It was a pretty neat seminar. The lecturers made the seminar interactive allowing the audience to answer questions and win candy bars.

Tonight's Unreasonable at Sea presenter is George Kemble, one of the founders of Stanford's D-School. He is teaching the Sustainable Global Entrepreneurship course. At this Unreasonable "fireside" chat he talked about how he got to where he is in his life as well as how he came about creating the D-School. He said that the D School is not really a school nor is it really design. He said that students and faculty come to the building on campus to work on their particular focus or emphasis. The D School has created a different kind of learning environment for people to innovate and enhance their creativity. He said throughout all of his triumphs and tribulations in his career and life, he learned to do what he loves and that he needs to take care of himself. He sees himself as a reservoir to help others succeed.