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Continuing the "action group" discussions from yesterday, the agenda today is about confirming the personal lessons and individual connections that have been building throughout these two weeks aboard ship. The big agenda here, of course, has been learning first-hand about climate change and international cooperation. That's the formal learning agenda on the physical or external journey that we're all sharing. The informal learning agenda, or the internal journeys that individual expedition members are on are ... well ... as different as the people who are here. The feeling in the air is definitely mixed at this point in the trip. People have some sense of the power of these shared experiences but there is also the nagging feeling that it's all going to end in a day or two and that each of us is going to have to move on without the context and support of our friends and colleagues from the ship.

As if to keep our minds off the mixed musings of departure, an announcement is piped over the ship's PA system that anyone who'd like to have a dip in the ocean is welcome to do so. With ice on the horizon and the ship more or less stationary in the water, that's exactly what happens. One by one (with the ship's doctor on standby and a Zodiac in the water for safety's sake), the entire expedition takes flying leaps off the companionway and into the 4°C waters of Davis Strait. Not getting the opportunity to exercise such tomfoolery on less energetic cruises, the big surprise for all of us is watching most of the Russian crew, stewards, deckhands, oilers and technicians do their own flying leaps into the ocean right after we all had a dunk. Education by immersion. Students in ice. Whatever one might call it, this puts a tingle back in everyone's skin, temporarily rinses off the worry of parting, and focusses attention back on the business of making sense of this incredible experience and packaging it up for application in other parts of our lives.