Welcome Aboard, It's Love!

Yesterday we finally embarked. It was actually kind of wild. We spent the morning with my friend Beth and so it was totally surreal to actually get on the ship and get this whole thing started.

We boarded at about 1:30, only to find that I was not on the approved list. WTF? So we waited and waited for security to come down an approve of my joining this expedition. I still don’t really get what that was about but, whatever.

Then we got our IDs (mine is truly ghastly!) which are also the keys to our room. We are in the Melissaki suite, which is lovely, even though most of the faculty have balconies and we do not. I do think our living area is slightly larger though. The room is very nice, with tons of shelving and closet space (although I completely understand why the suit case thing, because there really is nowhere to put them if you’d brought them. The only downer was that the outlet for Ricardo’s C-Pap was too far from the bed. So that necessitated a trip to find an extension cord. This was at like 2:00 or so. I thought I’d be a good doobie and go ahead and unpack us.

Talk about a monumental task! First we had to find our boxes and bring them to our rooms. This meant carrying most of them until Bruce found a hand cart and helped me bring down the last 4. Then we had to figure out what was in each box. Note to self, packing lists on top of box in the future.

By 3:30, Ricardo had still not come back. And now I was beginning to worry since the first meeting was at 4 and um, hello? He’d been gone an hour and a half already. Turns out he’d taken the wrong bus in the wrong direction. He made it but only barely.

Then we sat through a very long meeting in which people introduced themselves (darned if I remember anyone’s name) and we sat and froze to death in the student union. The room could not have been more than 60 degrees in there. Even I was cold and I am never really cold.

After the meeting they gave us alcohol (thankfully!) and that both warmed me up and calmed me down. Dinner was served shortly after the cocktail hour, and it was spectacular to sit out on the deck, eat your meal, and look at the harbor. I had to text Leslie and Abby to rub that one in.

The kids played soccer until very late and had a great time. There is another family with two boys, one just a little younger than The Kid and the other much younger. And there is a girl the same age as The Kid, and another girl who is 12 and they had a great soccer game. Lots of running and fun.

At 9pm they did a lifeboat drill. I would not have been overly concerned with this, but apparently a year or so ago, the ship was hit by a rogue wave, so it was something to pay attention to. All I can say is that better not happen to us.

We set sail at 11pm. By then I was asleep because I was way too tired to go to the launch or whatever they call it. I figure by the time we leave Ensenada, I’ll be used to the time change and able to stay awake. Until then, I need my beauty rest and any other kind of rest I can take.

They made a big fuss about the seasickness yesterday and I kind of blew it off. For one thing I have these patches, which work like a charm, and the boat seemed too big to really worry about it. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. At about midnight when we were actually in the Pacific, I woke up with the distinct knowledge that I was clearly going to be falling straight out of the bed. It was completely disconcerting. I got up to use the bathroom and felt like I was totally drunk and could not walk a straight line. I never felt sick, thankfully, but I certainly felt stupid, listing all over the freaking place.

This morning we were completely surrounded by marine layer and the sea. It was ghoulish. I felt like I totally understood why sailors killed the captain. It’s oddly claustrophobic feeling. But as we finished breakfast the coast of Ensenada pulled into view.

We played more soccer after breakfast and promptly lost a soccer ball to the sea. Note to self, tie nets tightly before playing. So we decided to go on a quest for a new ball. We packed the kids up and went into Ensenada. It’s nothing great, tons of serapes, silver, people braiding hair, and the like. But there was one odd thing that stood out. The other family and the 12 year old came with me and The Kid. Well, the little one in the family, (he’s like 4), was fascinated by this advertising trolley for Papas & Beer. They kept driving back and forth blaring their crappy music and shimmying their tube topped trollops. The little one looked at them and his response was “Hootchie Mamas!” Out of the mouths of precocious babes, I guess.

We never did get the ball, sadly.