Day 8 - Cruise Ship 2

Our body clocks aren't totally synced with the local time.  This morning, I woke up at 5:00am and went to the bathrooom.  The toilet in our room isn't quiet by any means.  The first step of the instructions for the toilet are to close the lid then press the flush button so I can't see it during the flush but the rushing water sounds like Niagra Falls.  There may be a vaccum involved also.  Maybe the captian of the ship will explain it to me if I every run into him.  Anyway, the flush of the toilet woke Katie up.  Remembering that the VP debate was on, I turned the TV in our room to CNN to watch the tail-end of it.  Quite honestly, I was too tired to really comprehend what was being said so I don't know if it was worth losing a couple hours of sleep.

At 6:30, we went to breakfast where I had a yogurt/fruit parfait, cereal, and orange juice and Katie had a bagel and coffee.  Afterwards, we went out to the top deck to watch the sunrise at 7:07.  It was cloudy, so we couldn't see the sun as the sky got brighter.  Before we could see the sun rise over the clouds it started to rain so we went back to our room.  I took a brief nap and then we went to Mass at 8:00.  One of the wonderful aspects of the cruise/pilgrimage is that Mass is held on the ship everyday.  In some cases, we'll have Mass at significant locations in the Holy Land.  What a wonderful experience!

Today is a "Day at Sea" which means that the ship will spend all day today getting us to Alexandria, Egypt.  As seen on the map, the Day 8 track is 24 hours worth of sailing.  On the map, it doesn't look that far, but I suppose when traveling 20mph, these somewhat shorter distances take up a lot of time.  That is one great thing about the cruise, we get to do activities while we are moving about the Mediterranean Sea.  Today was no exception. After Mass, Catholic Answers provided three lectures for us.  The first by Steve Ray was titled Holy Sites and Pilgrimages.  He and his wife Janet have been to the Holy Land between 55-60 times leading pilgrimages so his knowledge of the places we would be visiting in the next couple days was extensive.  Next Karl Keating gave a presentation on Ancient Egypt discussing some aspects of Egyptian history including hyrogliphs, the significance of the recently discovered Rosetta Stone, and geography of the area.  Most of the information was new to me so it was wonderful to listen to.  During his presentation, though, Katie and I admittedly were struggling to stay awake since we got up so early this morning.  Jimmy Akin gave a presentation on Ancient Israel which discussed the location of the 12 tribes of Israel and a timeline of the Old Testament.  After the presentations we went back to our room for a nap.

About an hour later, we had to get up and meet with Israeli officials to obtain our passports.  Apparently, the reason Holland America retained our passports was to have Egyptian and Israeli officials on the cruise ship stamp them prior to us entering their countries.  All of this was done for us, but we had to pick up the passports so we can enter the other countries.  After that, we ate lunch.  This time, Katie got a Chicken and Pasta soup, salad, beef kabob, snow peas, and baby corn.  I got slices of Lamb, tilapia, snow peas, strawberries and cinnamon ice cream.  After lunch we attended two more presentations from Catholic Answers.  Karl discussed the pyramids, how they might have been built, their purposes as tombs for Egyptian kings, and what the inside structures appear like, information all helpful for our trip to Cairo tomorrow.  Jimmy then gave a presentation on visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem as a primer for our visit to those sites in a couple days.  Afterwards, the three Apologists hosted a Question and Answer panel where they answered previously submitted questions.

At the end, we had about an hour to prepare for dinner which was a formal night.  If we had taken pictures, you would have seen that Katie looked beautiful while I looked like a schmuk since I didn't bring a jacket with me.  At dinner, Jimmy Akin sat at our table along with five other people, two of whom are from Guam.  We talked about our stay in Athens, how everyone is dealing with the jet lag, the space program, and many other things.  A couple days ago when we saw Jimmy, Karl, and Steve in the lobby of the hotel in Athens, I was star-struck and was drooling all over myself.  Tonight, Katie complemented me on behaving normally in front of Jimmy.  For dinner, Katie had a cesear salad, filet mignon, vegetables, risotto, and souffle while I had lamb, vegetables, potatoes, and Flambe for dessert.

After dinner we went back to the room to find a newsletter outlining Alexandria, Egypt (our first port) and the activities of the day.  Our Catholic group will be taking three buses for a three hour ride from Alexandria to Cairo to see the Great Pyramids, the Great Sphynx, and the Egyptian museum.  It was mentioned that there may be an opportunity to actually go into one of the Pyramids, which will require crawling and walking through tight spaces.  If given the opportunity, Katie and I will definately be doing that!  They also instructed us to change our watches to one hour back.  I don't understand this since Cairo is in the same time zone as Athens.  We will be arriving an hour early into the port, so if the point was to prevent confusion about the previously advertised arrival/departure times, we should be setting our watches forward an hour.

It wasn't long until I crashed.  Usually I'm the one to stay up late while she goes to be early.  While her sleeping schedule is more in line with the normal times, I seem to be a couple hours off, wanting to go to be early (8:30-9:00) and wake up early (4:00-5:00).  I guess that Katie's right when she keeps saying that I fit right in with our white-haired friends wanting to go to bed early all the time.  We do have an early start tomorrow, though, needing to meet on the gangway of the ship at 6:00am ready to leave on the buses at 6:30 for our day in Egypt.