We know coming back from vacation can be challenging, especially after relaxing with family and friends. With the start of the Winter Term, we kick off a new athletic season (perhaps the most exciting at Proctor!), new classes, and have a chance reflect on the first term. A little solace for those students making the return trip to campus today? They are not the first, nor will they be the last, to arrive in Andover after a Thanksgiving vacation!
Eight weeks ago, twenty-one Proctor Academy students boarded the Schooner Roseway in Gloucester, Massachusetts on a perfect September day. Family and friends waved goodbye with tears of hope and pride creeping down their cheeks. They knew, as did the students aboard the Roseway, the experience that lay ahead would be transformative. As program director Dave Pilla told families aboard the Roseway in September, "Your sons and daughters will return changed."
In this final Proctor en Segovia post travel with us to Barcelona, watch a Real Madrid match at Santiago Bernabeú, and, finally to Sevilla and Andalucía’s Costa de la Luz. Enjoy a short film by Gray with student reflections on life in Segovia and footage taken throughout the term. Also contained within are captions by Gray and Sydney, and short pieces of writing by Will, Jaz, and Sydney!
While excursions to other regions and cities of Spain are an integral part of the Proctor en Segovia experience, there is something comforting about returning to Segovia. Host families welcome students with warm, home-cooked dinners and are eager to hear of their adventures in Andalucía or on the Camino de Santiago. The granite and sandstone of the two-thousand-year-old Roman aqueduct and UNESCO World Heritage Site old town glows in the illumination of street lights. Inevitably, we have grown somewhat used to them, despite their grandeur, but they appear breathtaking again after a few days of absence. The return to our daily routine of meals with host families, classes at school on the Plaza Mayor and afternoon activities scattered throughout the city is reassuring. Estamos en casa, we are home, en Segovia.
After nearly fourteen days at sea, Proctor's Ocean Classroom aboard the Schooner Roseway finally made it to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. Read the crew's most recent ship's logs to get a sense of what has been happening aboard the Roseway since landfall on Thursday. With just two weeks remaining in their nine week journey, Ocean Classroom is savoring these final days together in the Caribbean!
As I write this, Roseway has finally entered the trade winds and is making way towards St. Croix, with an expected arrival sometime later this week. The passage from Cumberland Island to St. Croix represents the longest offshore leg of our Ocean Classroom program (anywhere from 12 – 14 days) and encompasses so much of what voyaging is about.
Proctor en Segovia traveled to Portugal's Alto Douro region and second city, Porto, for the first time, and students were captivated. Porto is, of course, still on the Iberian peninsula and only a half day's drive from Segovia, but we felt as if we had entered another world. Students were captivated by the richness and contrast of the colors, and the contrast of modern and ancient, land and water, world languages, and Spain and Portugal. Enjoy selected journal entries from Jaz and Eva!
This weekend, Proctor's Ocean Classroom crew of twenty-one students continues departs Georgia for a fourteen day passage to St. Croix. Five weeks into their once in a lifetime journey, students reflect on midnight bow watches, bioluminescence, dolphins, and living and learning alongside their best friends.
