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Yeah, Boojee, the cruise has certainly been less emotionally packed, although I haven't exactly been bored. Most of the sailing has happened at night. We always seem to be doing things involving swim suits or food.
Right now, I'm looking out one of many third floor windows of the ship. I see coconut palms and...what did the nature tour guy say those were? Bay grapes, I think. They are leafy and grow close to the sand.
This ship is huge, ten floors altogether. For the benefit of those who haven't been on a huge ship, it's like a small city afloat, with hundreds of bedrooms for guests, several bars and dining rooms, basketball courts, an arcade, and two separate pools: one for adults only (this being a Disney cruise, it's often empty) and one for kids, equipped with a Justin's Water World-style water slide, perpetually bursting at the seams.
One of the things I wonder about are the huge piles of towels that are being recycled through the laundry on an hourly basis. There's a lot of rum flowing on the cruise, too.
I can't help but wonder and worry, too, about our wait staff, Vlad (Ukrainian) and Chintara (Thai), who are in the dining room late in the evening and then get up early to run the breakfast buffet, disappeared from their families and permanent homes (if they have any) for months at a time without enough time off, I fear, to create a true life here on the ship.
Every evening when we are being waited on with our dinner, a young man turns down our bed linens and leaves us chocolate mints and even more white towels twisted artfully into the shapes of rabbits or swans. And he lines up in our shoes in a neatly Asian row.
I wanted to escape this false world last night for a little while. While Sarah, Tim & Noah were off making several hundred bucks at Nassau's hotel-casino, I asked Dad to escort me on a walk into Nassau. We wandered in the closed-down tourist shop area: Dunkin Donuts, Haagen Dazs, and McDonalds...so much for escaping the false world. A man approached us and conned $10 off my Mr-Nice-Guy dad. I was irritated and depressed, and it got worse when half a block away, I witnessed a young punk walk off with a snack vendor's Coke without paying for it. She looked stricken and confused. I chased after her and gave her enough money to cover the cost of the theft. She was still confused, obviously mentally handicapped. I remembered the story of Rod taking on the kids who were harrassing the mentally handicapped guy. ARRGGGGGH! I went back onto the ship thinking that the world is made up of at least 15 percent people who go out of their way to do evil, 40 to 45 "lukewarm" (the folks Scripture talks about God spitting out of his mouth: they do nothing good if it costs them), and maybe 45 percent are people who occasionally do good things. But I'm leaning ever closer to accepting Calvin's idea of "total depravity."
OK, let's talk about nature and lighten things up a bit. I went snorkeling for the first time yesterday. I felt awkward at first with the weird paraphernalia --uncomfortable, perpetually fogging face mask, long gangly tube for breathing--but eventually I relaxed and floated. Nearsighted and all, I could just see interesting shapes and textures of coral, purple sea fans waving six feet below my feet, the occasional bright blue blob (a fish, I knew, but...) Then a school of Sergeant Major--undaunted by a slow-moving, yellow-haired, teal-swimsuited behemoth (how did they know I came in peace?)--approached and swarmed around my knees for several minutes, close enough for me to actually see their lavender and yellow patterns. COOOOOL!
Today I went with Mom and Diane on a short, organized hike along Castaway Cay (the island that the Disney Empire has taken a 99-year lease on, so I suppose my hypothetical grandchildren can come here, if great wealth and Disney insanity ever overtake them in their lives). We climbed into kayak-style canoes and paddled several hundred yards out to a shoreline where we enjoyed the impossibly blue-green water and the beautiful sand and then learned where all that gorgeous beach came from: the native parrotfish.
They snack all day on algae that live (as parasites) on the coral reef, and coral sand comes out of the fish as a waste byproduct. One adult male parrotfish produces 1,000 pounds of sand in a year.
Yes folks, we were standing in parrotfish poop!
Can you just see God up there, yakking with the angels: "Hmm, how will I produce tropical island paradises in the Carribean? Wait...eureka...fish caca!" It's definitely a sign of grace in nature.
Tomorrow will be a day of little or no action. Maybe I can do laundry and schedule a massage. |
