A visitor poking their head into the classroom this week would see young women spread out across floor and table space scrutinizing nautical charts. An integral part of the TSSG program is practical application of the skills being learned or, as one student pointed out, “We gotta figure it out so we can get the ship back to Baltimore. Otherwise we miss our flight.” Along with becoming familiar with the charts of the area, students are also gaining knowledge about the cultures they will visit. For example, Portscha Jefferson taught the crew a few moves in an Afro-Haitian dance class that resulted in lots of smiles and later some sore muscles! Later in the week, we welcomed Professor Mirabal from SFSU’s Ethnic Studies department who talked with us about the cultures and customs of countries we will visit.

Monday started off early for most of us as we prepared for our Valentine’s fundraiser! How many Krispy Kreme donuts will SFSU students buy? Our efforts ranged all over campus and up to West Portal. In the end, the day was deemed a success as we had added money to the community chest.

Although the weather thwarted a planned field trip to the beach, we did get our first glimpse at sailing! Mike Rutledge, sailing instructor at SFSU joined the class to give an introduction to the principles of sailing. Where does wind come from? In what direction can we sail? What is a broad reach? Next Monday, we’ll get a chance to put this information to the test while sailing small boats on Lake Merced.

Our week started off with our first experience sailing. On Monday about half of the class met at Lake Merced where we got a chance to sail a dinghy under the supervision of two small boat sailing enthusiasts Matt McDonell and Mike Rutledge. The day started out nice although some ominous looking clouds were looming over head all morning. After having a practice run sailing in pairs and tacking with Matt, in the afternoon we were ready to sail again in pairs but this time without Matt in the boat. He followed alongside us in a motor boat. While the second pair was in the middle of the lake the clouds followed through with their threat and it started to rain while at the same time the wind picked up. In these advanced conditions, Matt had to take over and sail the boat back himself while Blanca and Ibukun transferred to the motor boat to return to the dock. Although everyone was secretly itching to see someone fall in the lake, no one did. The only mishaps were Elicha and Ke'xia sailing into a bank of reeds and a few people getting acquainted with the boom. All together though, it was a good experience and introduction to the skills we'll be using everyday in the upcoming weeks.

The rest of the week was spent in the classroom where we continued to learn about the many wonders of plankton, tips for finding fixes by lines of position, and everyone raced to get rough drafts of their country reports in by Thursday. In English we received our new books; Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi. We continued swimming lessons with Suzie Dods and Brett. Personal trainer Dr. Erin Thompson also came in and showed us additional stretches and exercises we will use while we're aboard the Spirit of Massachusetts. And a constant throughout this busy week were exclaimations of "I'm so excited!" and "I can't believe there are only seven days left!".