Day 2, Sunday, January 3, 2010: First Day at Sea

This was an orientation day.  We went to a short church service.  The cruise director, Peter Roberts, led it.  He’s not a pastor and he read neutral morality tales. 

A picture of Peter: 

After lunch we went a lecture on the first 3 ports.  Most of the notes I’ve embedded in later day blog entries.  Here’s some of the spare notes:

The presenter was a pastor for 30 years in Cal.  He now lives in Panama; has a coffee farm; It has a perfect spring-like weather, 80 high in day, 60 at night.  Has a desk, there 3-5.

He started with history.  The main cast of characters are Spain and England.  Columbus got only as close to N. America as San Salvador, Dominican Republic. 

He went on to describe, in generalities, the history and points of interest for the first three islands.  I’ve included appropriate points in the blog entries for those visits.

This trip is not going to be all trivia and bridge.  However, I did joint a trivia team and we won.  I got a high quality tote bag.  That was nice. 

Most of my “free time” is spent:

• Reading.  The first book I got from the library is “The Mayflower”  It is about the people, the voyage, and the first hundred years after the landing.  The theme is the relationship between the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Indians. 
• Genealogy.  I am labeling all the pictures, census pages, registration cards, and ship’s records I’ve collected.  When they are loaded from Ancestry.com, they are labelled by number.  That doesn’t do any good in understanding what the image or pdf file is and who is in it.  I have hundreds, so it is going to take a long time.
• I am cleaning up the records, such as resolving the conflicting information, adding missing people etc.  (I’m writing this late in the voyage and I find that I’ve added over 500 people.) 
• Practicing barbershop
• Yoga and elliptical (but not as often as I would like)

The gym facilities are much nicer than at the time of the R2.  There is an exercise room and many more machines.  The room is better than in the larger ships on which we have had experience, since it is on a high deck in the front, with glass windows giving us a panoramic view.