Wow, it’s November. When we left home over 5 weeks ago, November
seemed impossibly far away, and as we arrived in each new place and unpacked it
seemed like the trip would go on forever. Now it’s our next to last day at sea,
and we’re both filled with mixed emotions – ready to be home, and never wanting
the cruise to be over. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, but I
will miss having someone to make it, and to put clean towels out, and to clean
up after meals. Fortunately for me I will still have someone to do all the
cooking J
Because of the extra hour and relatively early bedtime I was
up before my alarm all bright eyed and bushy tailed but exceptionally sore in
my arms. Jesse did the stretch class and managed to stay mostly present – he struggles
more with letting the boredom show. He did let on how hard the sea days are for
the gym folks. When the ship has port days, they take turns getting the day
off, but when the ship is at sea they both work full days, and aren’t allowed
in most of the passenger areas, so it get really monotonous. I think you could
make it less boring by offering to help people learn to use the machines
correctly or work on form during stretches and so on, but they might not be
allowed to do that either. Anyway, the
stretch and abs classes are always a nice way to start your day.
I ended up at breakfast with a couple from Canada and a
woman whose home port I never found out. She had a thing about hot things
staying hot that was pretty funny – she wouldn’t drink tea on board, for
example, because the cups were so cold that when they poured the water in it cooled
down too quickly. Other than that she was very nice, and we had a pleasant
breakfast. As we’re getting to the end of the cruise I had both the breakfast
parfait and the oatmeal. Meanwhile Dave had breakfast on the Lido and went to
the astronomy talk, which was just a lot of facts strung together, some of them
wrong. Our table has come to the consensus that the speaker is boring. He
walked around a bit after that, and ended up finding a nice spot in the crows
nest and sitting and reading.
Meanwhile I went back to the cabin to pick up my phone and
headed to the nightclub. I wore my leopard niawear to the morning classes and
breakfast, so I didn’t need to change for class. The sound system was wacko
again, but I was able to get the sound guy out of the Queen’s Lounge again to
fix it. The mike was a little quiet, so we had to turn the music down to match
it. The class was small, possibly because of the second Mariner lunch – nobody
wants to be smelly when they meet the Captain. But I was feeling much higher
energy, and I had a blast teaching. There was a woman in the class who I think this
was her 2nd or 3rd time, and she was grinning a huge grin
the whole time – I think that must be what it must be like to have me in class.
We’ve been doing the song Lost Harpist for the whole cruise, and it’s been fun
to see people get more and more involved in the free dance section. Afterwards
I was telling Dave about the class and realized that I was calling 10 people a
small class. It’s going to be hard to give this up since it’s been such a
fabulous experience. One of the big changes I’ve noticed is what happens when I
miss a change from one move to the other, or lose the beat. I used to have to
stop, or spend a long time in my head figuring out what to do about it. Now I
just keep going. We’ve had “It’s Hot” in the playlist since the beginning, and
I almost always ask “what happens if you punch with the other hand?” and
everybody yells “NOTHING!” I’m starting to feel that in my own teaching as
well.
I’d swapped out Touched by God for Luna, which is shorter,
and since Kieron only interrupts during Touched by God we were done a couple of
minutes early so I could get up to the cabin to get cleaned up for the Mariner
lunch at 11:30. I thought I’d take the elevator, but it was stopping at every
floor so I got off at 4 and ran up. Fortunately the short hair means a short
time to get ready, so we were in plenty of time. We ended up at a 10-top with 4
Germans, 4 Americans and 2 Brazilians, so conversation was a little difficult
but still enjoyable. The other American couple had never cruised on HAL before,
so we’re not sure why they got an invitation, but they were very nice. We got
our tiles, which have the picture of a vista class ship with a sailboat and the
names of the 4 ships of this class – Oosterdam, Westerdam, Noordam and
Zuiderdam. We’ve now sailed on all but the Zuiderdam. The picture on the tile
is of a painting by Captain Stephen Card, and we have that painting of the
Noordam IV on this ship on the landing between decks 7 and 8 in the forward stairwell.
What we can’t remember is whether we’ve had that picture on the Oosterdam or
Westerdam, and my picture archives don’t say. If we ever make it on to the
Zuiderdam we will need to look.
Since the lunch started at 11:30 and was 3 courses rather
than 4, we were done well before 1 so Dave could go to the chilled soup demo in
the Culinary Arts Center, also known as the Queens Lounge. The host, Ashley,
continues to be mostly useless, but Daniel the chef has gotten more comfortable
and engaging as the cruise has gone on – this is his first contract. Today the
chilled soups didn’t take very long, so he decided to whip up some almond
brittle just for fun.
I’d gone down to see if I could get Christine to make some
handouts with the Nia and BodyFit websites and my BodyFit e-mail listed on
them, and she said she would. Dave got back from the culinary demo and did some
verandah sitting even though it is very hot and humid out, but then came in for
a nap on the couch which is more comfortable and looks out on the ocean. At
2:30 he went off to try to get a seat in the crow’s nest for the 2nd
officer’s talk, and I fired up the computer to refresh my memory of the opening
part of the first song of Dreamwalker. But, oops, I have the DVD of regular
Dreamwalker, but I learned the choreography for the first song from the white
belt version. So I’ll make something up for the first bit. At 3 I headed up for
the last day of bodyfit with Jesse. I have moved some of the exercises to
different days to balance them out, but as they are written day 4 is a lot of
upper body, and I was already sore from Adriaan. It turned out to be a very funny
class, because Jesse hasn’t done it very much and the get-ups are unique enough
that he was struggling and I was the one saying “come on, keep that arm
straight, let’s go” and all the instructory things. He got me back during abs –
crunches in boat pose, my weakest thing.
Afterwards I had a short swim and then went down to talk to
techspert Frank. Go ahead and sing with me: I’m off to see the techspert, the
wonderful techspert on board. I was hoping that (1) he had a printer I could
use in case Christine doesn’t come through and (2)he could explain why the
pictures on my android phone show up with the columns for music when I plug my
phone into my PC, and tell me how to fix it. Like Dorothy when she finally met
the wizard, I was disappointed because (1) he didn’t and (2) he couldn’t. Next
cruise Dave will be the lecturer and I will be the techspert. Then there was a
short break for relaxing before dinner.
It was formal night tonight, which is always a good time. I
wore my second Valencian dress and Dave wore his Barcelona suit and we looked
gooood. We had the photographer who comes around the dining room take a picture
of our whole table, which we hope came out. Also Marc, the ship’s doctor, came
to sit with us, which was good because he paid for all the wine, but not so
good because he kind of broke our stride. He’s from New York but is working
very hard to get rid of his accent, which made him sound kind of weird,
actually. We eventually all settled in and had a good time, and yes, Jim had
the crisp.
After dinner we went around and had our picture taken, and
then went to the show which is called Droom (Dutch for dream, they tell us). It’s
a classic story of thwarted love, good and evil, etc, set to rock and roll, and
aside from the bad singer it was very good. I especially liked the butterfly
costumes in the final sequence. Then we headed over to the BB King band who
have gotten better ever time we’ve seen them, but they are so loud that we can
only stay for one set. But maybe that is good so we can get a good night’s
sleep, since for some strange reason they decided to hold off on our extra hour
until tomorrow night. Maybe that way they think people will be ready to go an
hour earlier, I don’t know.
Tonight’s towel animal: crab?
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