Good morning! Well we are still in some mildly choppy seas, which the Captain has said are between a 5 and 6 on the Beaufort scale however we have traveled over 2200 nautical miles towards Honolulu and have about 300 nautical miles left to go! The outside temperature has also risen – today it is a nice an balmy 25 degrees Celsius or about 88 degrees Fahrenheit. On this lovely air conditioned ship when you pass by a door that is opened leading to the Promenade deck, it is like having a hot blow dryer blown at you! Very bizarre feeling!
Today I am focused on saving all my energy for the painting class, which is 2 hours long! It is at 4 pm. We are going to have a relaxing day at sea and then I will probably attend the crochet class prior to the painting class and then the painting class itself. The painting class you have to pay for ($25) however you get lots of goodies and can take your painting home with you! Our last cruise where I did this I REALLY liked my painting however we left it in the room by mistake when leaving in a hurry to get off in Barcelona. I was quite frustrated with my mistake in forgetting to pack it! It is sized so you can fit it into a medium suitcase between clothes. There is going to be another painting class after we leave Hawaii on our way to Fiji where we have another set of days at sea – so perhaps I will end up with two!
However first, we had to power lunch! I had a very delicious clear chicken and veggie soup with my bagel and provolone cheese. Andrew had some delicate deep fried motza sticks and then a Ruben sandwich. He lost some of his potato chips to me also! Funny enough, we had our dinner waiter, Ade, serve us at lunch today so he already knew about my dining needs.
Again, I met some interesting (understatement) ladies at the Art area of the class – first it was the crochet class where I went to help out as all I wanted to do is finish unwinding the skein of yarn that I bought in Seattle, that had become a huge knot over the last couple of days! As I quietly sat in the class while Bonolo, who is from Johannesburg, taught the crochet class to some new ladies trying to crochet, I decided to ask the ladies next to me who knew how to crochet already as one of them was facing me, what her shirt meant. It said “We will not stand for any Kings” and had an American flag on it. Was it referring to Martin Luther King? Oh, how stupid I was to ask that question as obviously I have not been watching enough American news! I found out, through a long explanation, that today was the day for the “March for No Kings” which was response to President Trump indicating that he should be King. I am going to leave this discussion there, as I would rather not get into political stuff here, however lets just say I was schooled on American politics and finally after about 10 minutes had to tell her that I was Canadian and I really do not have any interest in American news! The two ladies continued their discussion about all the things that Trump has done – which I did learn some things like all the generals that he brought to the Pentagon to lecture to them – these generals traveled from all over the world for this meeting and who were leading the troops at that point in time was in my mind! No wonder these two ladies are trying to find a way to move from Arizona to Canada – despite the difference in the weather! They also told me that all their “Canadian” friends are selling their houses in Arizona and giving up on the USA.
Next came the Painting Class – I was so happy as I loved doing this class on the Nieuw Statendam crossing we did of the Trans Atlantic in 2022. Holland America has partnered with Painting with “Gogh” which is a lady who teaches the class via video (pre-recorded) during the 2 hour class. She does an excellent job and channels Bob Ross – who used to paint a lot of landscapes for people to follow along, on PBS TV shows, if I remember correctly.
Today we are painting the Rocky Mountains – right up my alley! Lets get going! Most people had easels with the canvas on it to paint on however as the easel is too high for my arm to go up, I laid mine down to paint, propped up on the easel while it was lying on the table. I have included a picture of the lady in the video who was instructing us and then Bonolo took one of me so you could see how I was doing! I found painting this time a bit harder as we had a bit of a chop to the sea, vs last time our crossing of the Atlantic was quite a bit smoother. We had to do some “dotting” of the paintbrush and some fine lines for the mountains and lets just say my paintbrush was NOT doing nice dotting and fine lines! I finally got them under control though which was good! Nothing like acrylic – it dries fairly fast and can be painted over! I will unveil my finished painting tomorrow after it is dry!
That class actually took 2 1/2 hours so I got back to the cabin where Andrew was waiting for me just before we had to go to dinner. Dinner was good – I had a cold corn soup to start and then a new fish I have not had before – it was from Africa and called a King Fish. It is a white fish, on the drier side and flaky. Dessert was again a low sugar vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and a GIANT cookie! That cookie type I had not seen previously and it was a bit dry and crumbly so I ended up putting it into my ice cream with the chocolate sauce and eating it that way! Andrew had a Caesar Salad and then breaded Chicken with red sauce and veggies and then a Nut layer cake – layers of cream, wafers and crumbled nuts. No, Andrew is not starving – he is eating at times better than me!
After dinner, as we eat on the Promenade Deck (Deck 3) we went for a quick stroll outside on our way back to our cabin at the pointy end of the ship! Another day, 5+ kilometers walked on the ship!
Tomorrow we arrive in Honolulu and I am going to be SO HAPPY to be able to take my phone off airplane mode! Then my Libre Diabetes sensor and my watch, which are both controlled by my phone, will be in the correct time zone again! Right now I have been living with my phone where it last checked in with land – Port Angeles, for the last 6 days, despite going through 3 time changes! So when I get up at 6 am as that is what time my phone indicates, it is really only 3 am and I need to go back to sleep! Such are the major issues with being at sea…. It is going to get MORE confusing for me when we cross the date line as then I have to be in airplane mode until we get to Fiji! My Libre sensor will not work if I set the time manually on my phone – that from a software perspective, I would call a nasty BUG! However who am I to think that?
Have a great day and we will report in after our adventures tomorrow in Honolulu!