Last Day of Training -- Are We Ready Now?

We spent a tremendous amount of time in our faculty group being briefed and trained to a point of almost information overload. A lot of what we needed to learn is still being formulated since we are only in a post-pilot stage. So there are many grey areas and our key word has become our "f - word" or "flexibility". We promised to point it out to anyone who may sound like they are getting stuck in seeking a rigid answer to everything (I fell quickly into this predicament several times...). The other moto we developed is: "everything is a teacheable moment" which enables us to welcome ambiguity into everything that may happen...

Peggie, our inter-cultural training director is leaving us after 5 intensive days of training. Somehow I wish she stayed on board so that all the things she has tried to make us aware of and sensetive to can be re-checked with her once we meet our students... Due to the fact that we are actually going to develop our own community as we go along, there are so many unanswered questions regarding our ability to handle inter-cultural issues that will surround us, no doubt... Yet somehow it seems that everyone on board is very dedicated and serious about our mission, so Peggie's departure may be be just at the right time for us to test our choice to be on this voyage...








Last, but not least, we were reminded that we are embarking on an ocean crossing and MUST be always ready to evacuate the ship... oh boy... that part, however, was coupled with a comment from our Greek safety officer that in his 30 years on ships, he never worried about safety issues that were a result of a natural disaster rather he most feared the danger posed by having many drunks on board... Therefore, our students have a 4 drinks limit while we have none:)