Q&A with Concordia
From the week ending December 20, 1996
What did you do for Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays? Martin School, East Taunton, MA
by Karen May
On Canadian Thanksgiving, we all dressed up in our best clothes and had a really good turkey dinner with excellent pumpkin pie for dessert. On Halloween, which we celebrated on November 1st, we all dressed up in costumes. One person stayed in each cabin and everyone else went trick or treating to all the cabin doors. I don't think I'll ever go trick or treating again in the Pacific Ocean so it was a day I think I will always remember. On American Thanksgiving, we dressed up in good clothes and had yet another great meal. On this day, the American students onboard thought about their parents at home and wondered what they were doing. The strange thing is that we celebrated a day before everyone did in the US because we crossed the dateline. For Christmas, we weren’t onboard. Before leaving the Concordia for the winter holiday, we had Secret Santas and some people sang Christmas carols on deck.
Colors is the one thing that we know will happen everyday. Colors take place at 8 AM. Five minutes before Colors begins, Mr. Baldwin announces over the intercom, "Five minutes to Colors!" When we hear that announcement, we stop what we are doing and quickly head to the flags and the bell. Mr. Baldwin then announces, "One minute to Colors!" and then, "Everyone at attention, hoist the colors." Two flags (Colors) are raised everyday as the bell is rung: the Canadian flag, because we are a Canadian school; and the Bahamian flag because the Concordia is registered in Nassau, Bahamas.
One thing that is different about Colors when we are in different countries is that we raise their flag. For example, when we were in Brisbane and Darwin we raised the Australian flag. Flying a country’s flag shows our respect for them. The flags of all the countries we visit are kept in the chart room. After the flags are raised, Ms. Woomer calls, "At ease!" and then starts making announcements. We find out all the things we need to know and someone reads the morning report telling us how many nautical miles we traveled in the last 24 hours and how many miles to our next port. At the very end of Colors Ms. Woomer says "Have a great day." and then we go to class or watch.
I feel that being on this ship has enhanced all of the courses that I have taken. In one way or another traveling onboard Concordia has brought a new dimension to every subject including Social Studies, Marine Biology or even Journalism. If I had to pick one class that benefited most from being on the ship, it would have to be Sail Training. Sail Training, taught by Angela Holmes, is a class in which we learn the fundamentals of sailing and navigation. We learned everything from the chemical composition of the liquid in a gyro-compass to how the wind pushes a sailing ship through the water. Seeing the lines for each sail as you are learning about them makes it alot simpler to understand how they work. Of course you could learn this information sitting in a classroom in the middle of Massachusetts, but you will never get the full understanding unless you too experience it first hand, on a tall ship, in the middle of the South Pacific.