“Membership has its privileges”

I just got back from the first preport faculty staff party on our voyage. There were about 15 of us there hootin’ and hollerin’ it up for the majority of the time. Letting off steam.

A little backstory:

See, tomorrow we arrive in Cadiz, Spain, the first port of our around the world journey, so today was preport day. A day filled with lots of logistical information and work on our part to make sure that our travelers have a great time in port.

Seeing as though we are in international waters the legal drinking age is 18 (it’s the international legal drinking age). Each night we are at sea from 2100-2300 (9p-11p) we have beverage service, which must be monitored by my team. Beverage service is basically a bar where students are allowed to purchase up to 3 drinks each either beer or wine in one night. This is above the 2 drinks they are allowed to have in the formal dining room with dinner. The reason for this (there is a developmental reason of course, we are after all in student affairs, there is always a developmental reason) is so that students learn to drink socially as opposed to drink to get drunk. But of course you know us Americans we do everything to the maximum, so the students try to drink their 3 drinks as fast as possible and get as drunk as one can possibly get off of 3 beers/glasses of wine or get their friends drunk by sharing drinks (this is a violation of policy and can get your drink dumped)

For the past few days the Living Learning Team, of which I am a member has had to, on a rotating schedule, staff the beverage service to enforce the rules. As you can imagine not really a fun deal watching students do everything they can to get drunk on their limited supply, some students even act drunk. Yes really. And yes they try to sneak empty bottles in and sneak the liquor out. It's a little sad actually

Anywho. Today there was no beverage service. It was our turn to party. Though our spirits were dampened by the fact that we could not go out on the 7^th deck forward to watch the full moon (there was a blustery wind warning) we enjoyed it from the panoramic interior of our faculty staff lounge where my colleagues and I joined by members of the communication department and a couple of faculty and members of the IT department partied to our hearts content. We danced and drank (socially and responsibly of course) but most importantly we let off some much needed steam. You see, we have been working hard. I know you may not believe it but some of us have been working into the wee morning hours and losing sleep (on top of losing time).

So today we celebrated, our entrance into Spain, we have technically entered into their country since we are not in international waters anymore. In a few hours I will watch the sunrise over Cadiz and be disembarking in the land of my ancestors (technically speaking of course, those bastards did invade my homeland and tried to enslave the natives killing them off with deadly disease and tried to strip them of their riches, their culture and spirit all in the name of some Queen, but I digress).

Viva España!!!! Let the party continue