Jan 20th evening and Nuku hive the 21st

Interesting day, yesterday,

I took another bridge lesson.  We are going very slow, but with me, I don't know.  I will try; I know no one will holler if I get something wrong.  I almost feel like I am in school.   At 2 p.m. I played Mahjong.  It is always fun.  We only played three, but it is a good time.

At 6 p.m. a world cruise person, who has traveled extensively, runs a cocktail party every year to welcome everyone on the ship.  It is a very nice gesture by a very nice man, Malcolm Myers. I sat and talked to some interesting people.  Dana sat for awhile and then T.J. an assistant cruise director, who is about 59.  We actually had dinner together.  They make sure the solo, aren’t solo all the time.  Very nice man, who actuallyl comes originally from Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. It was strange not eating with a group of people.  I guess I will eventually become comfortable with that.  After dinner I lost 10 dollars on the slot machine.  I said I was not going to do that again.  O well, I did.  I did get to do one nickel at a time.  Not a good way to win!  Saw a Chopin piano concert. The gentleman was wonderful, but it was funny to watch people drop off (fall asleep) one by one.  Everywhere I looked heads were sideways, hunched over, or fallen backwards.  Off course once it was over, all these people were standing up to give him an ovation.  How funny!!!

This morning, we pulled into the harbor at Nuku Hiva, as I looked out the balcony, it looked beautiful.  Getting on the tender to go to shore, I realized. I have been here.  I remember the Arts and crafts and a church.  There was not to much else that I remember to see.

This is the most northern island group in French Polynesia, a thousand miles from Tahiti.  There is no reef, so the surf crashes the shoreline.  There are a small number of wild horses, cattle, and goats. There are about 2600 residents.

We took a tender into the harbor and then were put on buses and private trucks for the ride to the venue for all the guests.  There was carving demos, weaving; they showed how they cooked a pig and lots of dancing.  They did serve the food they cooked.  Pig, tuna in coconut milk, fried bananas, cooked sweet potatoes.  It seems like lots of starchy food. We saw no vegetables.  Desert, was coconut, pineapple, mango, some other preparations of the latter.  Interesting.

I did give away 3 hats, and i was given a necklace.  I took pictures, put I have to figure how to e-mail them.

Can’t help it that I sometimes feel so dumb, because I can't figure out the simple things.

Oh well, till the next time...

Bubbi, Bobbi, Me

(posted on behalf of Roberta Rootberg)