New plan

Dec 31, 2010

I made the definite decision not to go on the spring trip for all the resons I enumerated. I also decided that I would update the photos of this trip on the blog because the band width of the ship makes it impossible to put very many of them onat a time and I have lots. I shall probably do it slowly!!
In the meantime, Salt Lake: full of snow and cold, Charlie and grandkids visited for a week so I did not make any plans and saw them between their ski trips, tried to get rid of my latest and last ship -cold. My latest problem - when will the weather be clear enough todirve to San Francisco? Right at the moment, I don't think I'll try it. I don't w ant to be stuck in the middle of the great western desert in the cold and snow.

San Diego

. Dec 13, Monday, San Diego

We just docked. Its 8.30 am and a beautiful day. We now await word from Kathy to disembark and go through customs. As it will probably be 2 hours, thought I would update my blog.
We have had a fantastic week of goodbyes. An absolutely riveting commencement, believe it or not beca;use they are usually so dull. Each speaker was beyond belief. I don't know how they managed to find such talent! I copied some of it onto my computer so it will be there if anyone wants to hear it. Also a pre-port spoof on the faculty and staff by the students which was hilarious.

A possible change in p lans for me. I was planning to go on the Spring 2011 voyage in order to get out of SL cold winter. There were several problems: the short time to prepare, the difficulties of meeting the ridiculous requirements for the Indian visa, and the fact that I have bee sick so much of this trip which requires me to talk to my Dr. re what if anything I can do about this. Then, the other night I was sitting with Denise and Gerry at the Alumnae ball and telling them about this, and Denise said that they had an apartment in their basement that I could use if I wanted to get out of Salt Lake and they live right next to Charlie in Mill Valley (Corte Maderas) I e mailed Char. and he said it sounded interesting and I was welcome, ao now I have this decision to make!! I think I am leaning toward San Francisco. It would e neat to spend a long time there and get to know Chase and Baily before they are adults. I will have to call SAS and see what they say and then decide. Stay tuned!

Japan to Honalulu

Kobe

Unfortunately my cold got worse and turned into bronchitis so from Shanghai on I really didn't do much, Just stayed in my cabin, took medications and slept. One of the minuses of this trip is that any kind of illness goes through the ship like wildfire. Most people get sick, and then get well. I suppose, because I am old, my sicknesses always get worse and turn into something else - usually bronchitis.

I was supposed to meet my friend from the Icelandic horseback trip in 1992 ,who lives in Tokyo ,and spend the weekend with her there. She was going to come to Kobe and we were going to take the bullet train to Tokyo and then I was going to meet the ship in Yokahama. However, I decided that I had better cancel. She wrote back that she was also sick so maybe its just as well we didn't try it. Disappointung, but perhaps we cn do it on my next trip.

I did take a short SAS trip to Kyoto and saw some Temples and gardens which did not do anything positive for my health. These were very beautiful and needed to be seen with plenty of time to sit and absorb the scenery. It was a holiday though and crowds and crowds of people were everywhere. Busses were given parking times and spaces and people were marched through without being able to stop in order to make room for the people on the next bus. Japan is very overcrowded and I suppose they have done a very good job in handling this by strict organization so everything has a place and time and everyone does the same. I do not think it would be very pleasant though to have so little freedom to be spontaneous. Japam's infrastructure is superb and I love heated seats in public restrooms!

Japan to Honalulu

I still remained mostly confined to my rooml Did hear a few funnies: Someone asked "what is the elevation at sea level?" and "do these stairs go up or down?" Also our Almighty Dean changed the International dateline for us so that we would not have two Thanks giving dinners but had two days of Saturday, Nov. 27th. Is it surprising that none of us ever know the date and day.? We measure it by time between ports like "We haven't done this since Shanghai" etc.