I will start with telling you, I have become a big fan of cruises. I was a little nervous going into it, fearing all the things that happen, all the stories of how everyone gets deathly ill, and that they are no fun. Well, I had a BLAST! I am sure it was boring for those who went just as a couple. No offense to Lance but you can't do a cruise alone. It is so much fun with a crowd. We had about 35 of us all together with Pre-Paid Legal. We met so many incredible people who will be our good friends till the day we die. There were so many fun things to do. I could go on and on about the whole week and it I could take up pages and pages of all the fun things we did but I will shorten it and describe it best with pictures that I got. I don't have all the pictures yet, because we are waiting for them to get sent to us, but I still have quite a few to show you. Are you ready?
Here is what our week looked like:
Monday: We flew in and arrived in California around 12 noon. I have never been to California and I didn't get to see much except for what I saw from the freeway. I think I will continue to stay in Boise. It was far too big for me. We arrived at the boat about 2 p.m.. Just to the left of our ship as the Queen Mary Ship. It is the Queen Mary that first took sail in the 1940's. Met up with the other couples and ate like crazy because we were starving. We got to our cabin room, threw everything in and left to play. The amazing thing about the cabins, well at least my favorite part was, the towels they folded up for us every day. There was a new animal nicely decorated with towels left in our room. I loved them! In fact Lance and I went to a towel folding class they had on the boat so I could do that for my boys. 
I am so excited to show them. They are going to love them.. Of course, the cruise had to be scheduled during the Fiesta Bowl, BSU vs. TCU. Of course we found a T.V. in one of the other couples cabin and watched it. GO BSU! We WON! Victory was sweet, we were the only ones rooting for BSU. The others wanted to see them get crushed. Too bad, so sad for them.
Then we had a funny comedian we went to see, ate dinner like crazy, danced with the waiters. Ours were from India and Thailand. It is amazing how far they come to earn a living. Our waiter, Nessy, who was from India was a cute little guy. He was probably in his mid twenties. He had been working for the Carnival Cruise ships for 3 years. He is married and she is behind in India wathching his parents, who he claimed were really old. I asked him what "old" was considered in India and he replied "63 yrs.old." That is their mortalilty rate. He explained to us that in India the average person earns 1,500 rupels a month. They barely get by. Kessy (the waiter) earns 90,000 rupels a month just from working on the cruise ship, which comes to about $2000 a month in American dollars. His goal is to work for the cruise line for 10 years and then they get retirement. After 10 years he can retire to India and be a very weatlhy man. I was so intrigued by that. They were so amazing. There were 64 different coutnries representing themselves on that ship. It was truly amazing. The waiters always laughed at me because I always asked them why we had to have 3 different glasses, and about 10 different pieces of silverware to eat from. Yes, I admit, I do not know ettiqutte. So I learned. I still will continue to use paper plates and plastic utensils. It was fun to live like that for awhile. I didn't have to cook, clean, or do anything but have fun. I should do that more often.
Tueseday: I tried to sleep in. I tried every morning to sleep in, but when 6:30 a.m. rolled around I was wide awake. I couldn't understand how most of the couples would finally show up around 10 for breakfast and still be so tired. I can't sleep in. After my mission, and since having a baby in the house I am used to getting up early. Tuesday we spent the day in Catalina Island, which is about 26 miles off the California coast. Ever been there? I highly recommend it! It was so beautiful. We took a little tug boat from the cruise ship that was anchored off shore a ways. I felt like I was on some tropical island. The only word to describe Catalina is "small". Small houses, small cars, small stores, small streets. You name it. Everything is small. 
We all decided to rent golf carts and tour the island on our own. Now mind you, there were about 20 of us and we looked like trouble. We had fun following each other, racing and just seeing the amazing views from up top the mountain. We had the carts for about 2 hours and the last hour we decided to play tag on the island. So everyone got in their golf carts, 4 people per cart. We had Mork and Mindy with us. They are a dear sweet elderly couple and they are like our grandparents. They were alittle nervous for Lance's driving but we all survivied. We played tag for about an hour. All of us hiding and bumper caring all over the island. I don't think the natives liked us much but we had a blast.
Wednseday: We woke up in Ensenada, Mexico. There was a lot to see and do there. We were going to go deep sea fishing but I am glad we didn't. It was an 9 hour trip for those that went. Too long for me. So our group (about 15 people) decided to go Whale Watching. So we paid in advance to Sergio's Whale Watching guide and we had about a half hour to look around until our boat was gonna take off. So we all started walking down the little streets. It was so much fun. It reminded me alittle bit of my mission. The smell for one thing, was disgusting, but smelt like home (home as in the mission) and all the little junky, torn up little shops.
We walked down the fish market and that was so gross. I plugged my nose the whole entire time and I ran. I HATE seafood! The smell, the look, the taste, pretty much anything associated with it.
Well it was time to get back to the docks for our whale watching excursion. It was this good sized rusted tug boat, that was really dirty, and really load. It was kind of cool that day. The wind was blowing pretty hard an I was in shorts but thank goodness I had a long sleeved shirt on. I would have froze. I thought Mexico would be really warm. I was wrong.
We had a fun time. A little too long. It took us 5 hours. This is what we saw: 2-3 whales. Not much activity. A few tails and blow holes and that was about it. They told us that it was "calving" season and that everyone is having babies and that there would be tons of them. Well we saw some but not many. I was kind of disappointed that we didn't see as much as we could have. But nonetheless, we saw some and they were huge. They were humpback whales and a few Gray Whales there too. We road about 20 miles off the coast of Ensenada. We road out to an Island called La Isla de los Santos muertos (Island of the dead saints). I was curious about some of the things on the boat and a few of the things we saw so I started talking to this guy Martin about it all. He was a litlte shocked that I could speak spanish fluently. We had a nice conversaion. He could tell I had a different accent when I spoke spanish and asked me where I leanred to speak like that. I told him I learned while serving a misison for the church in Chile. All he said was, they are dirty people. I was thinking "And you aren't?" I know it was bad of me. I consider him a friend now. Martin has been working on that boat for almost 4 years. Never went to high school and goes out to see so he won't do drugs. Interesting!
We listened to Dancing Queen from Abba and Air Supply non stop. Felt like going back in time on an old tug boat off the coast of Mexico going nowhere. I LOVED it!
We got back close to dark, We were freezing, hungry and ready to get back on the boat. We had until 9:30 that night to be in Mexico, but from the looks of it, you didn't want to be out after dark. So we hurry and bought some trinkets for our boys and ran back on the ship for dinner and a show.
While we were watching for whales, Lance did a little bit of deep sea fishing and caught one. He was so about his catch.
Thursday: We sailed all day long. We had to get back to California so we could get off first thing Friday morning. We didn't do much of anything. We had a company meeting. Which by the way was awesome. I have not been very supportive with Lance and his starting his own buisness but after that I am going to support him 100%. We got a lot of new ways to start it up and get going. We are so excited about it now.We ate lots, played lots and went to some shows. We loved the kareoke bars, the danching halls and we played Murder in the library with about 30 people. Everyone was always stopping in to see what was going on because everyone was yelling and laughing so hard. It was the one night we stayed up really late. We were out until 1:30 a.m. I was amazing at how many people never go to sleep on those things. Insane. I need my sleep.
Friday: We had breakfast at 7 a.m. packed our bags and got off the ship to catch our flight back home at 11 a.m. We got back home at 6 pm. picked our children and went home for a work party that was going to start in a half hour at our home. It was a great week! Thanks for all the fun laughs, and the endless talks.
We can't wait for Cancun in June!
I will post some more pictures when I get them back.
1 comment:
So fun! I've never been on a cruise...but that's a good idea about going with lots of people you know. I think that would be a blast. Glad you had a good time!
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