World Cruise - Day 31 - Feb 12 - At Sea

This is our weird day, since it is Sunday by the ship’s clocks, yet it is also our weekly Sabbath until sundown later today (since it started on Friday sunset before crossing the international dateline).  Which also brings up an interesting question regarding the length of the Sabbath, specifically sundown to sundown.  Although this period of time may vary by a few minutes while on land (slightly longer than 24 hours from Dec 21-Jun 21, while the days are lengthening and slightly shorter from Jun 21-Dec 21 when the days are shortening), it can vary considerably onboard the ship due to the travel taking place that day.  For example, last night our sunset was at 6:53p and today it is at 7:25p.  So we keep a longer Sabbath while we are at sea traveling west.

No sunrise photos this morning, since we slept in to enjoy our day of rest at sea.  I was going to take some cloud pics at some point during the day, but they’ve never been that interesting.  Instead, here is Krissie’s latest painting.  She did this one as we sailed away from American Samoa:

The weather has continued to be beautiful each day.  Apparently it rained rather hard each day this past week in Pago Pago before we arrived, but the day we were there was beautiful weather, although pretty hot (mid 80s) and humid.  Today the forecast high is 81 degrees and low of 75.  There isn’t a lot of variation in the highs and lows for the past several days.

Sonia, thanks for the feedback on the photos.  I had more than 350 photos from yesterday (or day before yesterday, depending on how you calculate the international dateline into that statement) that I had to narrow down to the best 15-20 to use on the blog (and had to compress some to a smaller size to get them fit on the blog).

Julie, Krissie doesn’t usually like to take pics unless the camera is automatic and preset.  She said: “I will gladly do it, but you won’t let me.”  That’s at least somewhat true, I usually want to get a very specific photo, camera angle, lighting and framing.  Brandon knows how I did this during our European trip.  Usually the first picture was how Brandon thought it looked best, then I had him take another one (or two or three) that were framed more as I was envisioning.  I know, a little too perfectionist in the photo taking department.  Yes, the one ranger did show the other rangers leg tattoos.  He was talking about what you need to do to be a chief on American Samoa and apparently tattooing is part of the process.  They are both working toward becoming chiefs and one was already starting the leg tattoos that will eventually run all the way up the leg to the hips.  And yes, the larger camera is kind of a pain to carry around with you all day.  Several of the pics later in the day (the school girls and school boys, the local market, etc.) were taken with the pocket camera, since I went back to the ship to drop off my backpack.  Also, I’ve found that local people are less spontaneous when you’re holding a big DSLR than if you have a small pocket camera.  Almost like they feel they need to pose for the big camera, but they can just be themselves (or goofy, like the school girls) if it’s a smaller camera.  And about the family cruise next year, I booked a 49-day South America cruise from late Jan to early March on the Grand Princess.  Krissie really wants to go to South America and there are a lot of bucket list items there for us (including many countries we haven’t yet seen), so we may need to work around that timing.  Maybe early- to mid-January?

Patti, yes, THE Michael Jackson played the scarecrow in The Wiz.  If you’re a Michael Jackson fan, it’s worth a viewing just to see that.  The Cookies and Milk guy is only out there for an hour in the afternoon (from 3p-4p) and I don’t think he gets a lot of takers, but there are some and they do seem to really enjoy it (and look forward to him coming out on the deck).  The bats are fruit bats.  Here is a close-up crop of the photo I posted yesterday, although it was flying, so it’s tough to didn’t get all of the details on it.

He does kinda look like a flying rat.  Creepy.

Krissie and I enjoy a specialty coffee once a week on the Sabbath.  This morning I had a latte and Krissie had a triple espresso, which we enjoyed out on the back of deck 9:

We watched a video sermon on giving and receiving encouragement.

Our friend Jane Gilkey gave a presentation today on working in Brunei:

Former space shuttle astronaut Bob Springer talked about his entry into the shuttle astronaut program in 1980:

Today it rained briefly a couple times during the afternoon.  Someone mentioned that we were heading toward a typhoon that was in front of us, but losing strength, somewhere between Tonga and New Zealand.  Perhaps this is at the outer edge of that storm.  It has been very humid here and changing weather conditions throughout the day.  Here is a sunset photo I took this evening:

Note that we are now 3 hours behind Pacific time, although in the following day.  So, for example, it is currently about 8p our time Sunday evening, but it is about 11p Saturday evening in Seattle.

The show tonight was Kevin Spirtas, who performed on Broadway and in Days of our Lives on TV:

Tomorrow is Dravuni Island, Fiji.