After a slightly late night we woke up early – around 6 – and headed off to do our exercise-y things. I did workout 1 of Team Body Project’s Body Burst series. It’s tough workout that I like to do on the ships because it’s about 40 minutes and hits both strength and cardio, so you get it all done efficiently. I also like it because it is a pretty showy workout so people always tell me how awesome I am when I get done. And who doesn’t like that? I had a little free time between finishing my exercises and Tai Chi.
Tai Chi was excellent as always. On the way out of class
yesterday a woman commented to me that she felt like he was not introducing
enough new stuff, but I totally disagree. I am loving the slow pace and the
long amount of time we’re spending on Qi gong breathing before and after. If I
weren’t already relaxed and blissed out from being on the ship, it would be
really relaxing! At the end of the Tai Chi portion we ran through the whole
sequence together with no verbal cues, and it was just magical. There was a
couple watching from the bar and I could see that the class was in flow by the
expression on their faces.
Breakfast and off to William Beerman’s talk on the Hawai’ian language. He’s a linguistic anthropologist and I was excited for his talk, because I thought it would use his vocation to illuminate the history & connection to other Polynesian languages. But it turned out to be a dry recital of how written Hawai’ian came to be (here’s a hint: missionaries), how it was almost exterminated and came back, and a bunch of word lists. He’s just not a good speaker. But tomorrow his husband, a mathematician, is supposed to talk about bringing joy to mathematics, and that could be very cool.
Then I looked at my watch and thought I had to rush off to Hula, and then I got there and nobody was there but I figured they were on Hawai’I time, and then it was very sunny so I thought I’d rush back to the cabin for my hat, which I did, and I got all the way back there before I realized that once again I’d been fooled by the incorrect time on my fitbit. At this rate I’m going to have to go the watch sale on the ship and buy an analog one – Eileen was proud to show off her dumb watch with the correct time at dinner.
I relaxed for a bit until it was time to Hula. Like TaiChi, the class was a little smaller than usual. And like Tai Chi, it was very fun. We reviewed Little Grass Shack and started learning E Huli, which we’re also learning in ‘ukelele class. E Huli is a much faster tempo than Little Grass Shack, which meant that for the first time both halves of the official program title Hula Lesson/Polynesian Fitness came into play. Dave went to Kainoa’s lecture on Leis, which was well done.
We had lunch at the Lido because we wanted to not feel
rushed getting to the 1:00 Hawai’ian language lesson from the ambassadors. Dave
learned a lot but I took a full hour nap, half-waking enough to say the words
out loud that we were supposed to be repeating. Fortunately the nap revived me
enough that I was totally ready for our hula lesson. We reviewed our song
Vacation on the Zaandam, and continued working on E Huli. It was very
reassuring to realize that even with a week and a half to practice we’ll be
playing slowly enough to make the dance very do-able. There are a couple
non-beginners who come to the lessons, and one of them kept asking the teacher
if we could take it faster. I spoke up and suggested that we might let the
beginners set the pace, and agreed. He did it again a bit later, and Pua asked everyone
who was brand new to ‘ukelele to raise their hands – and about 2/3 or the class
raised their hands. We kept going slow. We also started learning Aloha Oe, which
is considered to be a traditional Hawai’ian farewell song. But Pua asked Kainoa
to translate it, and he came over and told us the it was written by Princess Lydia
Lili’uokalani, the last sovereign monarch of Hawai’i, as an apology letter to
her people for becoming a state.
I went back to the cabin and found Dave, and then we walked around the ship a bit – the weather is perfect – and ended up at the tail end of the pool party. We found a table in the shade and enjoyed our afternoon drinks listening to the dance band. Then we headed down to the cabin to put together our first bag of FREE laundry and get ready for dinner. We’d waited about a day too long and couldn’t get everything stuffed in the bag, but we have unlimited FREE laundry now that we’re 4 star mariners so we’ll just send another bag.
AT dinner Mikey and Linda (they’re daughter and mother, respectively – did I mention that?) had an excused absence to attend an event with their travel agency group, so it was a slightly different dynamic at the table. I haven’t talked much about our tablemates, so here goes with who was there last night. Eileen is from NYC, and yes, she is Jewish. She’s a regular cruiser but not often on Holland – her preferred cruise line is Cunard because it leaves from right there. Her primary goal on the ship is Bora Bora. Dennis and Loiuse currently live near Seattle. It’s a second marriage for both of them. They are big cruisers – for example, they’ve been on the ship since September 19, and will take a short break after this cruise before heading off on this years 120+ day legendary voyage on this same ship. They know everyone and everything, and sometimes Louise gets patronizing about her level of knowledge and monopolizes the conversation. There’ve been several instances when Dennis has tried to cut her off. We see them around the ship a lot and they’re the type of couple who is always together. I think they could use a break from each other.
After dinner and blogging we went to the show, DJ Bucciarelli again. It was the same type of show as his last one, but with songs by female singers of the 70’s instead of Neil Sedaka and less multi-media stuff. Since we like these songs better we enjoyed this show more than his last one, and we’re looking forward to one more before he gets off the ship in Honolulu.
After the show we walked out to 6 forward, the open deck under the bridge. There are no lights there so the navigators can see, and the wind was coming from behind us so the air was essentially still. The temperature was perfect, the ship was rolling gently, and the clouds were playing peekaboo (pickleball?) with the moon. We stayed there for a long time, it was peaceful and lovely.
The ship is full, and there are really only two times we notice that – you need to be at the world stage about 10 minutes before the show starts if you want to choose your seat, and seats at the Ocean Bar to hear the Dam Band are at a premium. Usually a few open up in the top part of the bar during the break between sets, so we planned our arrival carefully and were able to snag two pretty good seats.
They were really swinging as always, and the female vocalist did a musical theater version of Copacabana that was really fun. The set got progressively dancier, and I ended up dancing so much that my fitbit even noticed. I could have danced all night, but after falling asleep in the papa olela (Hawaiian language class) I felt like I should call it a night. Thank goodness for sleep stories in the Calm app – I’m not sure I could dance like that and be asleep a half hour later. As always the gentle roll of the ship makes for an excellent night sleep.
At 2 am ship time went back another hour, to Honolulu time.
We set our phones before we went to bed and it is triple excellent to have accurate
time on our watches again!
Cruise note: Every day in the library there’s a number puzzle sheet, and one of Dave’s favorite things to do is sit out on the verandah and fill it in (in ink, no less). Yesterday’s was a Kakuro, a variation on Sudoku where the lines need to add up to a certain number. Neither f us had ever done one and it kept Dave busy for an enjoyably long time.
Here is a bonus picture from a few days ago of me and Lewie playing our 'ukes
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