Kristin Reporting!
February 28th:
Today I sadly used up the last two glorious french toasts that we made way back at the Jenolan Caves cabin. They were “oh-so delicious”. I will miss them. <3 U French Toast 4-Ever!
D went to the grill and had a hamburger for his first meal of the day. He said, "Hey Kristin, these french fries were made by Rudi Sodamin also!" "Really??" I said, and grabbed one to eat. Immediately, I found there was no salt on them and they sucked. Ohhh, I remembered now. "Yep! Definitely made by Rudi!" I agreed. (Rudi Sodamin is the head chef on the Holland America Line. His choice picks are always low sodium and look at his last name. How can that be coincidence? Could that really be his real name?)
We spent the morning picking out shore excursions for the next leg of our voyage. All the way from Hong Kong, around Japan and back to Hong Kong. It took HOURS to work on this, and we can’t wait to get through to the end of the cruise so we don’t need to do this task anymore! We dropped off our choices at the tour office. We are toying with the idea of cancelling the Japan excursions before the deadline and just getting off the ship at the first Japan port and touring for one week on our own and then hopping back on in Hiroshima. We asked at the Purser's Office and they said we can totally do that if we want.
We found some Japan country guides in the library. I took pictures of the minuscule amount of language pages to help me brush up on my tourist Japanese which is all we'll need to get around. It's nice that my three years of Japanese study will be coming in handy again. (For the second time in my life– Yes! Hopefully I’ll come back one more time with Scott, and it will be useful again!)
Although I've forgotten most of my Japanese, my language skills come back quickly. Plus, despite it being eight years since I last spoke or read Japanese, I can still read the writing (Hiragana/Katakana-- I never learned much Kanji). It's actually interesting that I did not lose the ability to read the language, just most of the vocabulary and the more esoteric types of conjugation. And the vocabulary isn’t actually lost, it’s just buried. Once I hear a word that I used to know in a sentence, I remember it and its meaning and can effortlessly use that word again going forward. I don’t have to do any re-memorizing exercise nonsense. The human brain is very interesting.
More so because not every human brain is the same. In contrast to my experience, Davin lost the ability to speak and read Japanese entirely over the last nine years. His brain has held onto a handful of words and then confused even those few words’ meanings. While I was studying, he got interested enough to ask, “What does this phrase “_____” mean again?” Which led him to ask things like, “What is the toilet?” and “Who is the cost?” My god! He is lucky to have me around to do all the talking.
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| More islands! |
However, trusty language skills lie dormant in my subconscious. I guess I should have majored in language rather than history. My brain makes me the worst historian of all time! But I enjoyed my major and don’t consider it a waste. Instead, I consider my bachelor’s degree study to simply be the education all Americans should get in K-12 education. History classes in K-12 are a total embarrassment. There was too much repetition: You get one (or two) dumbed-down version of history in grades 1-8, and then they re-teach the same history with added detail in 9-12. There was almost no emphasis on modern world history: Each repetition of history never made it past WW2, and we never learned in detail about formative events in foreign countries from 1900 - present which had direct impact on our modern day wars and issues.
Anyway, we will decide tomorrow if we are going to do our own one week solo tour in Japan instead of staying on the ship.
I did another social activity today. I went to a Patchwork Animal sewing class. It was a nominal $6.00 fee. I could pick an Owl, a Fawn, or three minuscule dogs. The owl was extremely ugly, so I picked the fawn. It's a cute little baby deer! In the 45 minutes, I just had time to cut out all the pieces. The hostess, Janice, told us to come to the 3:00pm 'Knitters and Knatters' meeting to continue working on our projects. So, eventually I'll fit going to that sometime so that I can continue working on my fawn. (I was also going to go to a class this morning to make a patchwork turtle but I slept too long because I worked til 2AM. I figured one sewing class in a day was enough. That class may come back on the roster before this voyage is over too. The morning craft class is supposed to repeat eventually.)
Next it was dinner time. Another formal night, so D had to take the extra step of putting on his pre-made bow-tie! I had a broccoli flan which was actually pretty good, and D liked his rack of lamb. So far, so good as far as the food goes. I also had a cheddar cheese soup which was very flavorful, but I ran out of steam before I finished it-- a bit too rich!
After dinner, was the gym. A dreaded cardio day! On the Pacific Princess, I was in the habit of spending 30 minutes on the reclined bicycle because there was only one regular bicycle and Davin was using it. So, I now had the chance to upgrade to a regular bike machine. What a difference! The reclined bike is basically cheating in comparison! So, I had to change from 30 minutes down to only 10. My legs were mutinying almost from the get-go. D told me later that his legs were also tired today. I think all the walking in Sydney and then the recent shore excursions must be taking a bit of a toll on us! I did as hard a 10 minutes as I could stand, then I followed it up with 5 minutes on the hand bike. They actually have a hand bike machine! Exactly what Scott needs for cardio with his bad knees! It is so weird, and hard as hell. After just 5 minutes, I could tell my arms were going to be noodles and in pain tomorrow, so I called that a wrap.
Back from the gym, I wrapped up the day with some Babylon 5 and picture sorting.
February 29th:
We went to bed one hour earlier last night, but Davin didn't change the alarm this morning! That kind of annoyed me. We got up at 10:30am. I had an English Muffin for breakfast. Did some emailing, then went to the 1pm choir practice. D and I are working on our plan to get off in Nagasaki, Japan and re-board in Hiroshima, Japan– one week later. This way we will get more days (because the ship has 3 sea days during this period) and total freedom to see what we want.
At 4:15pm, I went to 'Coloring In' which was literally 5 old ladies coloring in templates with colored pencils. I knew that's what it would be but it seemed really stupid in person. Haha! I have so much better things to do. I stayed because it seemed too rude to leave! So, I have a partially colored in picture now.
Next, I settled down to do some bill paying/family accounting work. Also, some company bill paying. We decided to skip the sit down dinner today because the menu doesn't look very good, and I need a break from the rigamarole. Instead we planned to get a custom made pizza for dinner after we went to the gym. It was a weight lifting day.
After dinner, I spent an hour reading a Japan guidebook. Then, we went to the Juggler show at 10:30pm. He was good but juggling isn't really that amazing to watch. I felt he dropped his items too often for me to really be impressed, but to his credit he was doing extremely difficult tricks. Back at the room, it took me from 11:15pm til 1:00am to finish researching things to see in Japan. We can't do the whole list, but we now have a basis for planning our week now.
Tomorrow is our day in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. They have malaria there so we are going to cover up and wear bug spray. We started taking our malaria medicine two days ago. Happily our tour is in the afternoon so we can sleep in. Not planning to go ashore much, if at all, other than to do our guided tour. Apparently this place is so backwater they don't have taxis or even public buses. We plan to mail our postcards from the Philippines in case this place doesn't have a good postal system either!
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