Workshops on Board
Position: Horta, Azores
You can hear the waves, only waves? Or is there something else? If you listen carefully you can perceive a quiet guitar sound in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In the middle of our ship called Thor Heyerdahl.
A few days before the students had the chance to choose their workshop for the stage lag Capo Verde-Azores. But what exactly is a workshop? Is it similar to class on board? Or does it have more in common with free time? In the following part I will inform you about our workshops on the Thor and inform you what it means to take a workshop on board.
Theatre, Basics of the programming language Python, Yoga and Meditation,
Video and Photography, Playing Instruments and Screen printing. If you are a KUSi you have quite a selection of workshops you can choose from.
One of the most important facts about workshops is that you can clearly separate them from class. But it still reminds me of class somehow. Confusing? At the first look it seems like it is confusing at all but at the second one it hides something really special and interesting. As you already know, we got a big wide range of several topics and because of this, everybody entered a workshop. At this point I want to mention another important aspect… Workshops are not mandatory, they continue in our free time. In my point of view, it underlines that all of us are really interested in what we can learn. I mean it is our rare free time. Usually, they take part in our school routine. Mostly instant after our school day for eight times in one stage lag. For these two hours of the day all students enter their chosen workshop. Every stage lag, the students can choose one workshop but they aren’t always the same. Everytime you get a new chance to choose between completely new topics or a few you already know.
For this reason, I was extremely excited about our new workshops. At first the teachers gave a short overview about the different topics. Accordingly, there was a lot of whispering because everyone was thinking about what workshop they should take. I for my part decided to play instruments. Many years ago, I played on my guitar but I forgot almost everything. As a consequence, I wanted to get into guitar playing again. In my mind there was a little idea of how it could be, but there were also a few questions. How much do I still know from the past? How much knowledge has been lost? And will I have as much fun making music again? At this point I dreamed about learning the guitar on deck of our sailingship. Actually, our first lesson was the lesson, in which this dream came reality. Six students are in this workshop, taught by Didi. We met at the quarterdeck with guitars, ukuleles and one bass. Didi asked us about our level of knowledge so that everyone could start at his own level and speed. The relaxed atmosphere between all of us was in my point of view very important and nice. Because of this I had a lot of fun during our first lesson and I learned a lot. Undoubtedly, I have forgotten many things however I also remembered a few points. The second time we all met was during rough sea. But also, in the library, with not that much fresh air it was still fun. In addition, we played our first song together including the singing of course. ACDC “You shook me all night long”. With only three accords (C, D, G) we managed to play the first stanza. We also switched instruments, in this way everybody had the chance to play a new instrument and make sure to learn something new.
To put it all in a nutshell, one can say that workshops at the Thor Heyerdahl are definitely something special. A topic which combines your interests paired with the relaxed mood is in my eyes the best way to learn. Because of this I am really looking forward to the next workshop lessons. And of course, I am also interested in the following themes for our last stage lag Azores-Kiel. All in all… workshops are great!