going home

We’re sitting out on the balcony on our last sea day before we dock early in the morning in Fort Lauderdale and it is a gorgeous evening.  You can see Cuba in the distance and the sun keeps going in and coming out of cloud formations that make it a very soft evening.

  John got lucky on the wooden ponies today and won some money, the only money that we have won on this trip and we are trying to figure out how to fill out our customs declaration with amounts and things that we have brought back.  We are both learning our

 lines for our next play that we’re in and got to take a behind the scenes tour of the theater here and talk to the dancers, stage manager etc.  The amount of differences between their show and ours are amazing.  How much they have to prepare for and do differently to be on 

 water is amazing to us.  Every prop and set and scene has to be stored and lashed down so that it can’t move even in heavy seas with limited space and including the props for the guest performers.  They can’t get on ladders when they are at sea, so all the lights move down on bars so that they can be

adjusted.  They have 26 backdrops that can be raised and lowered for each show and have to deal with dancers that get sea sick, have to modify all of their shows depending on the seas of any given night.  I can’t imagine if 

John learning all the things our new camera does

the Canadian Lakes players had to deal with all of this.  We’d never had a show go on most likely.  We are without dinner partners this evening and packing has not been fun because we have accumulated more stuff on this trip than we ever took  for our month in Europe cruise.

  We have been very indiscriminate in our buying since our car is here and we don’t have to get on a plane.  I was hoping for a green flash as the sun hits the water tonite, but there are too many clouds and I think that Cuba would ruin the effect anyway because I think that there can’t be any land present in the horizon line, but I’m not sure.  Another thing that we will have to look up when we get back to shore.  Being on the ship really shows you how much our brains have started to rely on google to remember everything for us…