April 11th -- Sea Day

Monday April 11th, 2011 -- Sea Day. 

Day 12 of the cruise.

9:00pm

Miles sailed from Fort Lauderdale: 3881.5 nautical miles

N.M. sailed from Acapulco: 532.2

Woke up to darkness at 0700 hrs.  Not used to it still being dark at this time of morning.  The day was markedly cooler, with very little humidity.  The wind blew fairly strong all day, so that our supposed high temp of 87 degrees felt more like 75 degrees in the sun and 55 degrees in the shade.  I guess they are weaning us off of the heat and humidity.

Now, 9:02 pm, the outside temperature is 70.9 degrees, 82% humidity (really?!) and 17 knot wind from the NW.  The ocean is choppy tonight, yet the ride is not bad.

Today I had happy feet.  I popped out of the cabin early and walked for 45 mins before meeting Dad for breakfast.  After breakfast I practiced some karate on the balcony, but I felt more like dancing.  I ran back up to the Lido deck and joined the Zumba class just after their warm up song.

I spent some time on the deck sunning with Dad, browsed the library, tracked down a Russian and then doodled.  Our head table waitress, Natalya, is from the Ukraine and her native language is Russian.  I asked her to teach me a Russian word that would be easy to say.  She taught me “pre-vee-ette” (that’s phonic spelling), meaning “Hello” to a casual friend.  I say it to her when I see her in the morning and at dinner.  Angelina Jolie says it in the movie SALT when she greets Erik when she meets him before the boat ride.  I am making her a little thank you card and wanted to put some Russian on it, including “pre-vee-ette”, so I needed to find a crew member to write it out for me. It didn’t take long to find someone to write out “pre-vee-ette” and “Thank you friend”.  What took a long time was me copying what was written in Russian to my paper.   But I did, and later I asked another Russian speaker if they could read what I wrote (they did).  Will need to work more on the card on our last sea day. 

Met Dad for lunch then we headed our separate ways, him to bridge, me to line dance.  

I returned to the Lido deck for another showing of SALT on the outdoor screen.  Had to leave early to make it in time for dinner.

One of the things I found in the library was a book of foreign words and phrases.  I browsed through it and came up with two more Russian words that I could use at dinner to surprise Natalya.  To tonight when I ordered I used the word “zakuski” (za-KOO-skee) for appetitizer and surprised the heck out of her.  Then I said “nachevo”, meaning “it’s nothing, no big deal”.  I felt pretty cleaver.

Anyway, dinner:

Appetizer: Twice baked goat cheese souffle with garlic sabynon (sp?)

Palate cleanser: Strawberry and thyme sorbet

Main course: Seared diver scallops in a sauce with vegatables.

Dessert: Raspberry Menage-a-toi (3 kinds of raspberry little desserts) Amaretto ice cream.

Tonight I’m going to watch the 10 pm movie “True Grit”  on deck.  We get to set our clocks back and hour each night for the next two nights.  That’s a plus for the late showing. 

Tomorrow we arrive in Cabo San Lucas at 0700 hrs.  We will get off the ship later because we have to tender ashore.  We plan to walk to the beach in play in the ocean after strolling through the shops.