cpe: day 1 - for real

so my last post should have been titled clerical day one, or something to that effect, at least.  today was my first day actually chaplaining.  we met at sih (seafarer's and international house) and then headed with the director of seafarer's to the newark ports.  when we got there, he drove us around a bit and then we met up with chris, one of the part-time permanent chaplains, at the mall.  then we all headed out to meet the kilian (a ship) since it was in port.  it arrived yesterday and leaves tomorrow night, so the crew had already been visited once and had received phone cards, phones, and a hot spot to use.  we came just to hang out. 

we talked to a few of the crew who were hanging out.  most of them were from the philippines, although there was a cadet from germany as well.  we asked about family and got to see pictures of one of the guy's young son, who is now 1 year old, but who he hasn't seen for several months.  then, there were two decks of cards on the table, so we set about playing two different games, the first was similar to (gin) rummy and the second involved poker hands set up in a triangle shape.  both were fun and were a great way to interact with the men since it didn't rely too heavily on language, though they spoke quite well in english (much better than any of us did in tagalog, that's for sure).  it was also a low stress way of interacting.


after that, we got a bit more of a tour and then were dropped off at newark penn station.  from there we took some time asking about costs for different forms of transportation.  we ended up deciding that the best way to get around would be to take mta (ny transportation) to a path station, then take a path train to newark-penn station, then take the #40 bus to newark port.  the overall cost per trip (since they are each a different type of transportation and don't have transfers) will end up being about $5.05 one way.  multiply that by two, since we have to get there and back, and then by 3 since we'll be doing it three times a week and that ends up with $30.30 spent on travel to the portseach week.  then add into that the travel expenses for cpe the other two days which are $2.25 one way twice a day for two days, and you get $39.30 for travel each week for ten weeks.  this all doesn't include any expenses for other city travel either.