I realize I haven't said a word about teaching art on board! It's going fantastically well. I've had two classes so far - Visual Journaling and Zendoodles. Both went well. Classes fill FAST and furiously and are well attended. It was rough the first few days because my supplies didn't show up, but thankfully I had my slide shows prepared and was able to do that talk without supplies, and things showed up after that for Zendoodles. Now I'm just waiting for a box with pencils and my own personal watercolor paper which I ordered at the last minute and paid extra postage on to get here on time! Yikes! Hope it gets here before the cruise is over - earlier than that would be better.
 |
| Looking out at the ship before boarding in Ft. Lauderdale |
 |
| in Ft. Lauderdale before taking off the first time. |
The classrooms are small - tables hold 16 total. Classes have 29+. So I feel very wanted adn appreciated. I've held a class at night to teach some extra stuff - there's so much I want to share and there's so little time for folks to take classes, and so many things to do all the time, I want to offer more when I can. The monk is doing his meditation while I teach so I haven't heard him yet.
 |
| As we pulled away from Ft. Lauderdale |
 |
| First day of teaching, Visual Journaling |
 |
| Yeah, I get a little bit enthusiastic when I teach! I love it! |
 |
| There are 4 tables in the room for the students. The windows look out on the ocean. It's a remarkable setting! When I'm lucky, the ship is calm enough that I don't sway back and forth too much while writing! |
 |
| When there weren't enough tables, they used teh chairs. I feel honored that people were so interested they chose chairs over leaving. |
 |
| I've had one opportunity to get out my pastels and paint the ocean. I hope to have more time over the next couple of weeks. It felt wonderful to have the time to go inward and draw and think about the changing waves and the beautiful indigo blue of the water. DRawing is the perfect way for me personally to absorb what I'm experiencing. |
I have been able to attend Sandra Day O'Connor and Julian Bond's talks. They were terrific. There will be more of them which I plan to attend. The quality of people on this ship is amazing. I'm loving being around so many people with such diverse backgrounds and interests.
I'm taking a class from Bob Atkinson on memoir writing which is wonderful. He's helping me figure out how to structure the book I'm writing so that it makes sense. I'm very excited about that. I feel like I might actually be able to put something together now that works! That's a great feeling! When I heard there would be a program called Semester at Sea on board, I had a feeling I might get just the help I need here.
www.robertatkinson.net is the website of this teacher. He's quite wonderful - soft spoken, nice, skillful. His wife is an energy worker who is quite a wonderful person. I'm enjoying the two of them greatly.
Other than that, I haven't managed to take any other classes - they happen while I'm teaching or during the writing class - but there's still lots of time, so I know I'll get to do more!
time to go - I do want to see a bit of Colon before the ship departs! See ya again soon!
How did your lecture on travel photography go?
ReplyDeleteJim,Thanks for asking. I haven´t given it yet. I was planning for that to be my very first lecture, but right as I was getting ready to tell the 600 plus passengers all about it, Dean Jacobs, a travel photographer by profession )he worked for Dianne Fosse photographing her animals), told everybody he´d be teaching a class on Travel Photography the next day. I felt like it would be a joke for me to compete with that so I switched up to my Visual Journaling class. Dean has now left the ship so I feel like I can teach the class but have several other things I´m interested in doing, so might not get to it ' after all that work putting it together! I´ll let you know if I do do it.
ReplyDelete