Friday, September 25th, 2009, At Sea

The day dawned clear and fair, so we got up early and walked on the deck at sunrise. After several cloudy days, it was refreshing to see the sky again! We enjoyed a beautiful sunrise peeking through a few remaining clouds on the eastern horizon.

Then we attended a lecture on Labrador and Newfoundland at 10:00 a.m. The history of those provinces turned out to be a long but rather sad history of economic deprivation combined with a struggle for independence and self-determination.

I kept working on the journal before and after lunch. I had to back-fill the events of the week we spent with Lois and Phyllis in southern England as I had been too busy to do so at the time. Monika saw a pod of orcas swimming past the ship during lunch, one of those unpredictable but exciting things that happen aboard a ship at sea.

The evening production show was "Country Gold", a song and dance production organized around country and western music. We sat with Lois and Phyllis during the performance, but had rather different reactions to it. In one sense our reactions were predictably consistent with our reactions to previous production shows: Lois thought the music was too loud and the costumes were too skimpy. Bob thought the music was too loud but the costumes weren't skimpy enough. Monika thought the sound level of the music was just bearable and the costumes were just right. Phyllis was the least judgmental of us all and simply enjoyed the show and appreciated the art and athleticism of the performers. Monika and I judged the choreography to be particularly well done. The show numbers interspersed a solo singer (sometimes combined with a pas de deux dancing performance) with full ensemble song numbers ranging from duets to quartets that were combined with full-company dance routines. We also thought the costumes were nicely appropriate to the country and western theme of the performance.