Goodbye Alaska

We have just complete our last Alaskan cruise! We now are on our way to Seattle and then on to Hawaii. This is now a 30 day cruise that will end in New Zealand. After that I have one 14 day cruise to Sydney and I am off the ship. I have 6 weeks left on board, and then I have a 9 day vacation in Sydney.

Well this last week has been filled with a lot of interesting events. First of all this marked the last week for our executive chef and sous chef. They had an awesome goodbye party a couple of nights ago. The new exec chef is already here, and I remember him because here was still on board for my first week. It will be interesting to see how things differ. I know already that our budget for food has gone up 50% for this 30 day cruise. This means no more canceled orders and running around trying to get certain items.

There is a Filipino crew show every week and some of the guys asked me and the chef to come and watch them perform. It was a great time, we sat in the show lounge and watched some traditional dances. They also had some songs and then a hip hop dance number put on by some of the guys. They asked me if I wanted to join them next time, but I don't think so. Anyway they announced at the show that all of the crew is Filipino in the kitchen, and here I am sitting next to my Dutch chef saying, "Um....NO."

Some interesting things that I have noticed or have happened are the fact that my tourne skills have vastly improved due to the necessity of tourneing a lot of vegetables. I mean potatoes, carrots, squash, apples, pears, oh my what fun! But seriously I never thought I would do this again after I left the CIA. The other day in the elevator I got on and this guy wasn't paying attention and I guess just saw my whites and started speaking tagalog, the Filipino language, to me. I just stood there and said, "push 4 please" as my hands were full. He then continued to talk and looked up and was shocked. I guess I'm blending in pretty well here. Now as we are in September now the kitchen is filled with Christmas music, yes already. They told me it is a really big deal in the Philippines and September starts their countdown. Also when I have a chance to turn on the tv it is always at the same time every day, and this means I see the same part of every movie. I think I have seen the same 15 minutes of 6 movies for the last 19 weeks. Wow 19 weeks down already.

I will try to post when I can, but I don't know how the internet will be during the crossing on board the ship. I certainly don't plan on bringing my laptop with me when I go ashore. I will post my calendar for October later and you can see all of the places I will be going to.