Things are off to a great start.  Today was sort of an orientation day.  We learned about how the science party would be grouped and how their work would be organized.  We also had presentations about shipboard life, safety and computer technology.  We found out our lifeboat assignments and went up on deck to make sure we could find our assigned lifeboat.  The picture above shows some of the science party checking their lifeboat assignments.   We also got to meet Captain Alex, the technical crew and the operations crew.  While all this was taking place, the ship’s crew was busy loading in more supplies for our 2 month stint at sea.  Right now, we are scheduled to sail for New Zealand Sunday morning at 7:00 am.  Tomorrow they are going to turn the ship in order to do a lifeboat test.  I’m really looking forward to feeling the ship move.  It’s going to take an hour or so – should be exciting!  Lots of people on board are excited about helping with our educational outreach, so we should have lots of neat blogs, videos and other things coming up.