Acapulco

I got off the ship in Acapulco today. It was hot and humid as you'd expect though the beaches weren't all that pretty sadly.

After passing up a series of beach-side restaurants, we ended up at a place that one guy loosely translated as "pork and love." I assumed that it was a kosher deli, but was tragically mistaken. I very much love Mexican food, but this was my first chance to have authentic Mexican. The meal started with various hot sauces, pico di gallo with avocado, black beans, pickled carrots and zuchini, and obviously freshly made tortilla chips. They then brought plates filled with carnitas (for the Joffe's, I think that's Spanish for Kosher chicken), guacamole, fried pork fat chips (which I took one bite of to try, but that was my last bite). To eat this with, they brought out freshly fried corn and flour tortillas. Of course, a cerveza washed it all down. It kinda made me want to move to Mexico.

On our way back, we stopped at a grocery store. I bought a few different kinds of hot sauce. Each one was under a dollar. It made me want to fill a bag with all different kinds. I limited myself to 3. Meijer kind of ruins you on some of these trips because you see products that you remember seeing at the international food aisle of Meijer. In addition to the hot sauce, I bought Bridgett her birthday gift of pure vanilla from Mexico. Sadly, we can't bring alcohol on the ship so I couldn't accompany that with Mexican tequilla.

On both our way there and back, there was a constant swarm of taxi drivers, street peddlers, children, etc, offering us goods and services. Most of us just walked on by but the New Zealand guitar player, who's never been out of his country would always engage with them. Eventually, he learned, but still needed to say "no thank you." Except when he tried to say it in Spanish, it always sounded like Italian. "Non gratzie"

A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life

I haven't gotten off the ship yet, so there hasn't been much to write about. I thought I'd give you an idea of what my daily life is like. I wake up around 8am, check my email (in 2-3 min), and then go work out. Once I get back and shower, I do work until 11am when I can go upstairs and have breakfast. This may be the most consistently enjoyable meal of the day for me on ships. I have some oatmeal with banana, dried pinapple, and raisins, either hard boiled eggs or an omlette (today's was an egg-white omlette with onion, tomato, smoked salmon, and cheese), a whole wheat roll, and maybe some fruit.

After breakfast, I come back to my room to work on the dissertation until 2:00 when I go eat lunch. Usually a salad with some sliced turkey or roast beef or something like that and some soup. Then...back to my room to work on my dissertation. I'll have some sort of sound check at 5:30 or 6 after which I'll sometimes have a "pre-dinner" depending how hungry I am. This pre-dinner usually involves a roll and fresh cheese or some ffruit. It's way too early to go upstairs and eat, but I don't want to wait til 9 to eat again so...pre-dinner.

After pre-dinner, I'll go back to my room aaaand...do a little bit of work, but more likely watch some tv with my dissertation open on my laptop. 8:15 show. 9:15 dinner at the buffet. 10:15 show. 11:30 sleep.

Now that we're headed back to the east side of Mexico, we've gotten a lot more American (as opposed to European) ESPN so there's always football or SportsCenter to watch which has been nice. Sadly, on the passanger movie channels, they're still playing all the movies that were on my last cruise, but some are still worth watching again. There's an odd predominance of Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Garner movies (Blind Side, The proposal, Invention of Lying, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and others I can't think of).

Hope that was of interest. Feel free to post any questions you have about anything. I know Bridgett normally has a few...but it's best to keep her in the dark sometimes...

A blog, eh! (and other palindromes)

Thanks to some encouragement from some usual suspects and a new, last-minute encourager, I will be continuing my popular blog documenting my cruise ship experiences.

A warning for those who read this: I will likely run out of things to talk about after a while and my blog entries may become (or always be) sporadic. Read at your own risk of waking up to the crushing disappointment that I, once again, have not written a blog entry that day.

My travels take me from Vancouver to LA to Acapulco and ultimately to a run between Ft. Lauderdale and Acapulco. I will frequently pass through the panama canal (a man a plan a canal, panama eh!) which is good because I lost my panama canal pictures during my laptop theft incident.

While in the Toronto airport, I had the pleasure of eating lunch at Tim Horton's. For those that don't know, Tim Horton's is Canada's equivalent to dinner at the Ritz or lunch at the Carnegie Deli. Not really. Plus, I didn't even have one of their signature donuts. I'm saving up my appetite for the chocolate covered pretzels that Melanie Joffe was kind enough to make me and the trail mix that Daniella was kind enough to pack me.

So, that's all for now. I'll write more when I actually get on the ship. In order to keep this blog vibrant, I may return to an idea I had during my first cruise. On Mondays, I may post an entry encouraging questions that I could answer in a blog on Tuesday. Just a thought.

The end dne ehT.

Ship me baby one more time

After some emailing and negotiating, I was offered a contract today on another ship in the same company I'm working for now. The ship starts with a trip from Canada to LA and then spends 15 days going from LA around mexico to Ft. Lauderdale. After that, it's a couple of itineraries fairly similar to what I'm on now, including panama, Colombia, adding Acapulco and Nicaragua.

I'll be gone for 7 weeks from Sept. 18-Nov. 5. The great part about this is that I'll be home for all but 5 days of my "favorite" time of year between Oct 31 and Jan 1. Also, it'll be good because I will be able to pay rent!

Although I wouldn't want to go out for longer, 7 weeks is a somewhat frustrating length of time because it's not long enough to cancel my cable, sublet my apartment, cancel car insurance, etc. So, basically, I'll have similar bills as if I were still living there...minus the living there. Does anyone want to sublet an apartment for 7 weeks in Cincinnati? I'll give you a real good deal....

Another positive to this is that it gives me extra incentive for my next learning goal. Ever since I've been doing ships, the language I find myself most wishing I would know is Spanish. Now that I'll be spending 7 weeks in all Spanish-speaking countries, my plan to learn Spanish has increased purpose.

The trombone player on my ship has Rosetta Stone software for Spanish that he can give me. So, I have about 5 months to learn Spanish! I don't need to be able to discuss the advantages of a 2 party system or anything, just the basics. For any of you who read my original blog, I may finally know how to say "don't shoot, I voted for Barack Obama" in Spanish!

Accomplishment

I'm thrilled to report that after much hard work, I have a complete 12-page detailed outline of my entire dissertation. It contains a breakdown of each chapter, each point I'm going to make, and, even better, the musical examples I'm going to use to make each point. According to my outline, I will be making reference to somewhere between 100-150 different songs from about 80 different musicals.

Although writing the dissertation will be its own animal, this gives me a very concrete road map for writing. Now, in order to complete my proposal, I need to turn that 12 page outline into roughly a 10 page paper summarizing the entire thing.

Oh, and I went to jamaica today. It was rainy.

Piano Man

So, I haven't told you about one of the production shows we do on the ship. It's called Piano Man and it features me in some ways. The curtain opens to me alone on stage at a grand piano. WHen the show starts I play a solo version of Piano Man and then the black curtain just behind me opens to reveal the rest of the band. The piano and I slide back and we play the rest of the overture. It's pretty cool.

Want some cheese with that?

I told you all I didn't want to write a blog this time around. I told you that I'd run out of things to write about. But you all begged and begged. And what happened? I ran out of things to write about. Now some of you are whiiiiining that I don't write.