Monday, December 26, 2011

Monday, December 26, 2011

Tonight's picture was featured on the front cover of our 2007 Christmas card. What I immediately see in this picture was Mattie's Christmas train. Mattie LOVED trains and was fascinated by their power, speed, and mechanics. In this particular toy train, Santa was the engineer and as the train went around the track, it played Christmas music and puffed out steam. This became a holiday tradition for Mattie. Each year, he looked forward to setting up his train around the tree. Naturally this train remains in Mattie's closet even today and though it is not set up anymore, I remember its sound, but also I vividly recall the sound of excitement and laughter it produced in Mattie.

Quote of the day: Imagination enhances our lives by supplementing the inadequacies of the real world, or our experience of it, and can also give us the vision to transform present reality into something new and better. ~ Erik Blumenthal

On Christmas night, the Ship had a formal dinner. On our way to dinner, Peter snapped a picture of me. I am posting it because I wanted to show you how lovely the Ship was decorated for the holidays. There are Christmas trees, wreaths, boughs, real gingerbread villages, and Menorahs everywhere.

Some of my blog readers have emailed me and asked me to post a picture of me with my parents. Here is a picture of us together at Christmas.

I haven’t explained dining on the Ship. But it is an experience. In fact, I would say that food may be one of the biggest forms of entertainment on any major cruise liner. With our Ship holding 2200 passengers and over 1000 crew, feeding this army of people at ALL hours of the day is NO easy process. Yet Princess does it well, because it isn’t easy cooking in such large quantities and yet keep the food looking elegant, enticing, and fresh. The Ship has two main dining rooms, two specialty restaurants, and a 24 hour a day buffet. Not to mention an ice cream bar, a pizzeria, and a grill for hamburgers and other items.

Our wait staff at dinner is Manny and Jeannette. Both are from the Philippians and they work very hard to make us happy. In fact, Manny is teaching us card tricks during dessert and Peter has already mastered how to perform a few of them. Keep in mind that most cruise ship employees work 11 hour days and unlike us, they do NOT have weekends off. In addition, they work 10 out of 12 months a year.

Dinner is typically served as a four course meal and last night the two main featured entrees were turkey or ham. If you know me well then you are well aware of the fact that I could eat Thanksgiving Day food ALL year round. I love turkey, cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes! Eating for me is an experience, it isn’t just an important necessity in life. While at Dinner last night, my mom took a picture of Peter and me. The funny part about last night is one of the ship’s photographers came around to our table and took a group shot of us. He thought Peter and I were brother and sister. We laughed hysterically. I guess they say couples look alike after spending so much time together, I don’t know! But since I do not perceive us as looking a thing alike, the whole notion was a riot.

We have been having rough seas each night. This is our first Caribbean cruise where we are actually experiencing this kind of weather one day after another. In fact, one man near us fell in the dining room the other night when a wave hit the ship and caused it to rock substantially. This morning, Peter captured some beautiful clouds. So I wanted to share this with you. Mattie and I used to look at clouds all the time and create stories about each one of them. Somehow when Peter showed me this picture, I felt like this was Mattie’s cloud, following us and cruising right alongside us.

In addition to clouds, Peter saw this very beautiful sight over the Caribbean. I did not have the chance to see it, but I am so happy he captured it for me.

Today was a full day at sea as we are travelling about 400 miles from Costa Rica to Jamaica. Though we are at sea the Ship keeps you very busy with all sorts of activities. My mom and I did another zumba class this morning, we walked over a mile on the deck, did a foxtrot class, attended bingo, and then went through all the shops on board. Trying to do any of these activities was royally challenging since the Ship was rocking and pitching, but we managed.

Tomorrow we arrive at Jamaica and this will be our last Island visit before we return back to Ft. Lauderdale on Thursday. In a way returning home is also bittersweet for us and it is always an adjustment, especially since we are being forced to greet yet another year without Mattie in it.