Embarkation!

"Embarkation" is the act of passengers and crew getting aboard a ship, boarding...or in this case 575 students!

After a quick breakfast and readiness meeting, the students started arriving to the ship. Throughout the day, I just walked around the ship, greeted students as they boarded, and tried to meet as many of the 74 students on my “Sea”. The ship is broken up into 8 “Seas” (one for each Resident Director) with my sea being the Baltic Sea (see pic below), which is on the 3^rd deck, port, aft (using those seafaring terms).

Here are some stats regarding the participants on the voyage:

575 Total Students

-74% women

-245 Universities

-35 International Students

-60+ Majors

-9 from Ohio

-0 from OSU (2 from OU though)

-53 = largest representation by any school- University of San Diego

40 Faculty Members

36 Family Members

32 Partial Voyagers

31 Staff Members (including me)

23 Lifelong Learners (ie: individuals just traveling)

The day flew by and before we knew it, On-Ship time was here (which is the time everyone MUST be on board). Following a mandatory lifeboat drill (which the RDs served as coordinators), it was time to depart the port of Southampton. Everyone on board grabbed their camera, went outside, and waved goodbye to land. The next time we would physically be on land (St. Petersburg) would be in approximately 120 hours.

Group on the back of the ship as we are leaving Southampton, UK

Luckily, the first section of our voyage had relatively calm waters and thus absolutely no issue (at least for me) with seasickness. Captain Jeremy rated the waves as a 1.5 out of 10, so clearly it is going to get worse. Though I must add, even the rating of 1.5 caused all aboard (myself included) to lose our balance from time to time just walking down hallways. I can only imagine what it will be like when we get some major waves coming our way. In addition, we saw a large number of ships throughout this initial voyage to Russia. I definitely wasn’t expecting to see as many as we did, but I’d say we could always see about 3-4 other ships somewhere around us/in the distance. I have to imagine when we start traveling the Atlantic Ocean, this won’t be the case. 

Partway through our first voyage, the MV Explorer entered the Baltic Sea (my “sea”), so we had to take a picture.

 Only 1/2 of my Baltic Sea students made it to our picture with the Baltic Sea 

In addition, the ship passed under the Oresund Bridge, which connects Denmark to Sweden. I distinctly remember Molly and I standing in DragØr, Denmark (4+ years ago) looking at the bridge and Sweden on the far side. Unfortunately, I still have not made it to Sweden (as we just passed underneath the bridge), but I’m getting closer!

Oresund Bridge (connecting Denmark to Sweden)

I woke up early on Thursday, as we were entering the port of St. Petersburg at 600 because I wanted to see the view. I mean…how many times does someone come into a city be ship? Unfortunately, the view wasn’t the greatest as the majority of it took place going through a shipyard. However, I heard some other ports (including Cape Town and Rio de Janiero) are not to be missed, so this will definitely be a tradition I continue throughout the voyage.

 

Woke up early to watch us come into our first port city!

 

 Port #1: St. Petersburg, Russia

After docking, passing out student passports (as everyone needed them to get in/out of the country…each time they left/came back to the ship) and getting cleared, we were off to explore St. Petersburg and Mother Russia! 

"Follow your heart, minute by minute and day by day. Let the course of the river run as it will, instead of tying yourself up in fears that you may never realize."