Ghana tomorrow

James Godfrey saw a hammer-head shark swimming along beside the ship yesterday. Poor thing won't get much--we dump no garbage, actually nothing at all into the sea--we are an environmentally friendly ship. We make our own water for drinking, bathing, brushing teeth, etc. out of sea water. It all looks and tastes just fine. The water goes through a number of filtering processes that work well for us. Then in port we buy all the water we need while we are there. So we have no laundry service in port and are asked to conserve every drop we can.
Last night we went to a fancy dinner in a lovely private dinning room to say farewell to five people among the Life Long Learners and faculty who are leaving the ship in Ghana. They all had signed on for just a part of the voyage, so their departure had been planned from the beginning. Still they seemed sad to be leaving. Those of us attending the dinner had been specifically invited by one of the five. Linda Davis, a faculty member from the Bahamas who teaches at the University of the Bahamas, invited us. These special gourmet dinners cost $25 a person and we all paid our own way. I am glad I get to be on board for the whole vouyage.
Rob and I are already saying we want to come back to Semester at Sea for more voyages. There is one around the Mediterranean, one through the Panama Canel, one to the Carabean, and one to South America. So our particular itennery is by no means they only choice. The ship is always on the move with different length voyages. The whole semester trips, such as ours, take almost 4 months and are the longest. We ae on the fall voyage--the spring semester voyage reverses or itinerary.
By the way, our visit to Ghana is quite special because we are the largest group of Americans to visit Ghana at one time ever. Semester at Sea has never been here before, so we are blazing a trail for them. President Obama, I guess, blazed a trail for us (though he was by no means the first American to visit--maybe the first American President?). We have a Ghanian faculty member and a Ghanian student who were brough on board at Casablanca to ride with us and to teach us about Ghana before we disembark there. We get such experts before most ports.