Jan 27th, 2023 Day 25 of 128 

Sea Day

January 28^th, 2023 Day 25 of 128

 Sea Day

Last night we set our clocks back another hour so I unfortunately woke up at 4:00am.  I laid in bed for about an hour before I got up and got ready to go the gym.  The gym doesn’t open till 6:00am so I walked the decks on level 9 waiting for it to open.  I was not the only one up that early either.  After the gym I came home to wake up Megan.  And because I am always so hungry after my workouts I want to go eat too. I have been coffee free now for about 2 weeks. I reward myself with a cup of tea after my workout now instead of coffee. We headed to the Pinnacle grill for breakfast and Megan brought another one of her mangos to eat.  We allowed the waiter to take it to the kitchen and they cut and prepared it for her.  Super sweet of them to do that!!  She has one left and we are waiting for it to ripen.  After breakfast I went to Project Linus and Megan went to play Mahjong.  Megan came and got me around 11:30 as she was hungry for lunch today.  There was a taco station and we both had build your own tacos for lunch.  Next, we headed back to the cabin and I caught up on my blog from yesterday and Megan had Bonita come for tutoring.  I watched a recorded EXC (excursion department) presentation of the upcoming ports of Auckland and Tauranga from the TV in our cabin. Most of the excursion talks take place at 10:00am and I have a conflict with my schedule due to Project Linus so I am glad they are recording them now so we can watch them later. We had to be at the shops by 1:45pm to model in the Effy jewelry store’s fashion show.  We were given several beautiful pieces to wear and walk the “catwalk” as they talked about the pieces we were each wearing while announcing some fun facts, or hobbies we had told them about ourselves.  It was a little nerve-racking walking in front of the other guests, but we definitely had fun with it and had a really good time.  Afterwards, we all just stayed behind and received a nice thank you gift and shared a glass of champagne with the Effy store manager and talked about our lives.  A very special and intimate time with other passengers and crew.  The opportunity to bond with people on the world cruise is one of the things that allures me and others to come back again and again.  It really becomes a family because we spend over a third of a year together.  We have come to realize how precious time is and this trip away is truly a priceless gift we have given to ourselves.  O.K., sorry the champagne makes me sentimental.  After the fashion show we headed home to work on writing some postcards that we hope to send once we come into the next port of Tonga.  We opted not to go to the main dining room for dinner tonight. Instead we went to Lido Buffet where we had the Chinese New Year Celebration the other evening. They had a stir fry station and I created (they cooked) a low calorie, low sodium, vegetarian stir fry for me and it was delicious and guilt free. Megan enjoyed some traditional Chinese food dishes and we shared some tempura. After dinner we headed to the Neptune Lounge for about an hour of Rummikub (Yes, that is the correct spelling. I had previously spelled it incorrectly and notice that on the box yesterday). After I beat Megan, two games to one, we headed home. I relaxed and got into my jammies and Megan went to the swimming pool for an hour. The pool doesn’t close until 9:00pm so she took advantage of being the only person in the pool and got in a few good cannonballs!! Another fantastic day. I am exhausted since I was up so early. Tonight is the weirdest night of the cruise for us. I shall go sleep on Friday January 27th and when I wake up it will be Sunday January 29th. Farewell to January 28th, for I shall never know you for I left you on the other side of the international date line. LOL!! Hugs and Love to you ALL!!

Megan is wearing a three piece set in the shape of a Dragon encrusted with white diamonds; I am wearing a four piece set of blue and white diamonds; We had a lot of fun!