Meeting up with Semester at Sea Professor and Students

Today I had an opportunity to meet up with a group of students from the Semester at Sea program...now in Japan and nearing the end of their around-the-world tour. You can read blogposts of their current voyage here. Professor Rashna Singh, my former World Literature in English professor in the graduate program at New York University some years back, had contacted me to meet up with the group. She asked me to talk to them about my Japan-set writing in a program titled How Place Informs Story. It was a rushed visit but we walked and talked and zipped up to Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura as the sun was setting, then ate okonomiyaki.

Here we are just before heading up the Dankazura walkway that leads to Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine--the group includes current college students and lifelong learner adult students:
And Professor Singh with me on the shrine grounds:
Rashna Singh is the author of, among other titles, Goodly is Our Heritage: Children's Literature, Empire, and the Certitude of Character. I loved Professor Singh's world literature class at NYU; one paper I wrote for her on the use of non-English words in English language fiction--a comparative study of three novels--had me spending hours learning bits of Swahili. Words she said in her course have continued to guide me and resonate with me for years as I write my books. Some teachers truly become lifelong friends and mentors. 

Wishing the SAS group smooth sailing as they head to Hawaii then Central America!