Life on the Ship
This particular ship, “The World Odyssey”, is new as of last
semester to ISE (Institute for Shipboard Education), which runs Semester-at-Sea.
This is only the second semester that this ship has been part of the program.
It is incredibly fancy. From what we have heard, it is very different from the
last ship, which was bigger and not a luxury cruise line. A challenge has been
to create enough classroom and meeting spaces in the various rooms on the ship without
crowding out places for people to gather informally. In the summer, another
company rents the ship.
Here is a video with pictures we have taken on or beside the
ship so far to give you a sense of what it is like:
Myanmar Rick's ppt
We recently spent five days in a country that has been categorized as one of the most "closed off" and brutally run by a military dictatorship since the early 1960s. If anyone had asked us about our interest in traveling to Myanmar prior to this voyage, we would have struggled to even find it on a map. It turned out to be one of our family's favorite stops so far on this voyage. The country's military allowed for a free and fair democratic election this past fall, largely to appease human rights advocates and to encourage more foreign direct investment. In a surprise to the military, the pro-democracy/Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi won or, more precisely, her pro-democracy party won a landslide victory. This has given the country a significant boost of both optimism and tourism. We stayed along the coastal region of Panthein. Here are some pictures below:
