I love QUESTIONS!!

Hello everybody!! I am so excited to get to Japan tomorrow, I can’t even begin to tell you. Time on the internet is limited, so I am writing this up on word and then pasting it to my blog. If I don’t update it often, that is why.

Um…I’m trying to remember some of the questions that my sixth graders had….

Yes, we have seen some fishies. Some whales from far away when we were doing a life boat drill. A lot of flying fish. When we docked in Mexico there were some otters that came to shore. Occasionally, when I look out I’ll see a dark shadow in the water and will try to see what it is, but it’s tricky to see.

Living on a ship is easier than I thought it would be. You get your sea legs and get used to the rocking pretty fast. And at night when you’re going to bed it’s like some one’s rocking you to sleep. I think I’m probably going to have a hard time adjusting to dry land when it comes to sleeping in a bed that’s not moving! Not to mention the ship isn’t very big at all, so if you need to go somewhere, well you don’t have to go very far. Food is getting pretty old. After this I’ll no longer want pasta again. I’m sure I’ll be more appreciative after seeing struggling families in some of the countries, but for now…I just wanna get off the boat…ship, sorry! You can buy food in port and bring it sealed on to the ship. And they sell smoothies and candy bars, but I’m trying to be good. These things add up you know. In any case, I’m down to two meals a day because the pasta thing is getting old. Yesterday they had plane, steamed rice and I was as excited as my Asian friends. Ruby, John, and I started a Mixed Martial Arts and Self Defense club and there are a lot of other clubs going on like Yoga, Tai Chi, and a whole bunch of stuff. Classes are HARD! I haven’t done this much reading and studying since I was at Talent House! And before all the clubs got started it felt like the only thing there was to do on the ship was read, but now it’s getting better. When it’s sunny you can always lay out by this oversized bath tub they call a pool. We do have TV in our room, but they only play movies at night. And most of the time (except for when we are in port) they only play documentaries or foreign films from our next port of call. But there is this channel that shows you where the ship is in the world and the coordinates and stuff so that’s neat. When we left Honolulu they played United Flight 93 (which I refuse to watch) and Superman Returns (which I did watch) so that was nice. And it’s been weird to have classes for nine days in a row without a weekend. Our in port time counts as our weekends, but even that is going to be constantly moving! So we’re basically not going to sleep until we get back to the states.

And languages. I don’t speak any of the languages of the ports we are going to visit. But they do have these pre port seminars where they’ll teach you some key phrases and about cultural dos and don’ts—always good to know. And we have students come aboard the ship from a port before we reach it (so we have some Japanese students on board now) who we can asks for directions or tips and things like that.

Back to Honolulu—urs truly went SKYDIVING!! I haven’t written about it till now because I didn’t want my parental units to talk me out of it (love you mom and dad!). At the beginning of the first week, I was trying to get a group together to go, but I didn’t know anybody. So during a Q and A session at our last orientation meeting—we had like five—I asked how we can get groups together for people who want to do certain things. The lady didn’t really answer my question so I was like, “well, I want to go skydiving and I want to know if there is anybody else who wants to go. Does anybody else want to go skydiving?” And like half the place raised there hands! So I asked her how I can get a touch with all of them. So they told me they would put a bulletin board up in front of the Field office. Next thing I know I’m the “skydiving girl” (not a bad nickname by the way) and we broke the record for number of jumps in one day for this place that we found, Pacific Skydive, with 113 jumps in one day. It was amazing; you could see the whole island from up there. Not to mention a great way to meet and bond with people, jump out of a plane together!!!

Anyway it’s 800 in the morning here and I want to go eat breakfast. Thank you for ur questions and PLEASE try to send me mail, since eventually it will cost me money to update on the internet from the ship. I will try to get to an internet café sometime in Japan to update pictures from skydiving. It simply will take to long to try to do it from sea. Hopefully, I’ll be sending you guys your first cultural packets within the next two ports.

LOVE u ALL
DD

To Talent House--please tell me all of ur names and how many of you there are in the class!!! :)