Jan 12th, 2020 Cruise Day 9 of 128

Greeting from the other side of the equator!  There will be a grand celebration when we get back across the equator on April 30^th.  But for now, according to Holland America, “King Neptune has gracefully pardoned us until then for the Grand King Neptune Ceremony”. It is very cute how the incorporate so much into our day to day schedule.  Valerie ran off the library at 9:00 this morning to get the book they are reading for the first book club, Air You Breathe.  I incorporated her reading of the book and the discussion questions into her English curriculum so it’s a win win.   Megan and I met up with the Project Linus group ay 10:30 and spent an hour crocheting our blankets.  They are coming along.  At 11:30 this morning we all met up and had an opportunity to enjoy our first Sunday brunch on the ship.  Think lots of tiny food.  I took a picture of the appetizer course and attached it below.  Sorry, I forgot to get one of the main courses cause I was so excited.  It is just another way Holland America sets themselves above and beyond others.  At 1:00pm Valerie went off to spend an hour with the amazing tutor, Megan went off to her watercolor class, Nana went to deal with ATT and I went to my room to accomplish getting the girls lesson plans done for the rest of January so they can get ahead as they want to.  At 2:00 pm having all accomplished our 1:00pm goals we met up for the day’s lecture titled, “The Brazilian North East.”  At 3:00pm Valerie and Megan ran off to Rhumba dance class and mom and I stay for the second lecture on, “Brazil’s Agriculture.” Our brains are getting so much bigger. Then it was time for us all the go back to our rooms to ready ourselves for dinner.  I have a love/hate relationship with the 5:15 dinner seating time. Today it meant we only ate two meals, which is totally o.k.  It also means the girls are usually done in time to get to the Club HAL program which starts at 7:00pm.  But sometime it feels like we are in the middle of doing activities and we have to stop to get ready for dinner.  We are also realizing, it’s o.k. to miss dinner in the main dining room from time and time.  Tonight as we arrived, they greeted us and warmly told us we were missed last night.  We told them we were watching the 49’ers game.  Below you will find a picture from our coveted dining room table at the window at the back of the ship. You can see the trail the engines make as it breaks the water behind us. After dinner it was goodnight kisses to Nana as we decided it should be an early night since we have to be ready to disembark by 8:30am tomorrow.   I sat with the girls and corrected their homework for the week.  After a few corrections Valerie got to go off to Club HAL and Megan and I got to spend some 1:1 time while she was relearning some math lessons.  Tomorrow we will be in Belem, Brazil.  We are doing a tour that should give us an all around tour of the city.  It’s going to be a really hot day.  So we will be sure to bring plenty of water to hydrate.  I bought a new Ospry hydration backpack before we left on the trip and so far we really enjoying it.  It has enough space to hold whatever else we need to bring along in addition to holding 90 ounces of water.  Sending you all big hugs and lots of love from our family to yours.  Debra  

P.S. as I was looking over my photos to post tonight, I saw our nightly photo of our towel animal. For those of you not accustomed to cruising, it’s kind of a tradition for your room steward to create an animal for you each night. We have not had a repeat animal yet, but suspect it will happen soon. Hugs!