CRUISE: Enjoy and learn with SAS

“Cruise trends for 2014” in Sunday’s paper was interesting to me because I love a good cruise. Not an attempt to make me think I can drink and party like Justin Bieber!

Semester At Sea is without a doubt the BEST cruise experience on the planet if you are a student, a retired person, or a professor.

Students have the awesome opportunity to experience 14-16 countries, study with some of the world’s most talented/learned/experienced professors, and learn about the culture, politics, economics, geography (and more) of multiple countries while earning college credits from the prestigious University of Virginia (UVA).

Retired folks have the amazing opportunity to do all this and more. We have that very unusual opportunity to regenerate, revitalize, grasp opportunities and experiences we haven’t had in 20 or 30 years, and feel young and excited. Watching the students realizations of a bigger world and bigger opportunities shocks me. In a good way. Just realizing the difference between the expanse of new options they will experience compared to the options I had when in college is mind-blowing.

Henry Ford said, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”

As I stood on the deck of the 1,500 passenger MV Explorer, looking at a brilliant, full moon casting its shimmering reflection across the sea, a professor I recognized as “Pinky Nelson” the astronaut, approached and offered me his huge binoculars. “If you look through these, you can see that tiny little dark spot on the upper right hand curve of the moon. That’s the Sea of Tranquility where we landed,” said Pinky Nelson, Professor/Astronaut, and one of two men to have ever walked untethered in space.

Sure beats slot machines, screaming music and waterslides; www.semesteratsea.org.

SHIRLEY THAGARD

Hayden