Wow.  We are living on a ship.  One that secretly moves around the planet while we are sleeping.  Like a sneaky teenager…it moves around following instructions from a group of “authorities”.  They are men and women dressed in white uniforms and sticky-bottom closed-toe shoes.  They look so formal and busy at work.  (I have a plan to dress in all white, find some white hospital like sensible shoes deck and see if I can be accepted into their lives. It is possible that this under cover operatiin will result in a suddenly acquired pleasingly intelligent accent. (This type of accent adoption has occurred once in my lifetime already.  It happened during the 2nd year of college. I became Brittish.  I had authority and people looked at me with great interest.  I will be born again.)

Our quarters are considered to be the owner’s suite.  What this seems to mean is we have 4 people sharing 50o square feet.  But, our glorious balcony!!  It can accomodate our entire family.  This morning, at 7am, Tate decided to spend some time on MY balcony.  He decided to bark back and forth to the Ensenada harbor seals!  Tate was pretty darn excited to arrive in our first port.  It also seems the seals were super happy to bellow back to him in support of his glee. Not certain that everyone aboard appreciated this display of joy. 

We have packed and stuffed our closets full of American necessities.  We took Uber to Ralph’s in order to pack our under the bed tubs with all packaged snacks we could hold.  We even displaced our life jackets to fill every space with honey nut Cheerios, cheddar cheese mini rice cakes, 6 IPA’s and hundreds of little left over Halloween candies.  “Boys!  This will be the last of America you see for the next 4 months.  Pick your snacks.”  They also choose a few random Japanese snacks so they will be “ready” for Japan. Over the next two weeks of sailing we will eat small Japanese snacks in order to avoid culture shock.  This will work. Oh….yah… tonight we set sail across the Pacific Ocean with 550 freshly boarded college students.  The games begin now. In Ensenada.

After being “at sea” a total of 8 hours, I now suspect myself to be considered an accomplished sailor.  I even managed to stay on the treadmill for 30 minutes this morning.  My sea legs have been tested! Being on the treadmill gives you the sense of freedom. I blast songs about the open road. And, run.  This morning I saw some type of sea mammal breeching behind the boat.  I have yet to reconcile this amazing sea mammal with running on the open road…..but I have other fish to fry at this point.  I have 4 hours of port time to locate a semi-reliable watch in Ensenada.

Off to find a watch in Mexico. It seems our reliance on cell phones keeping the time must end here.  Especially, as we are moving through time zones at such a rapid clip.   Cell towers are hard to come by in the middle of the great wide open. Makes sense.  We will use the stars to navigate our way and to tell us when to eat all of our newly acquired snacks.

Here are a few photos from the past few days.  VIVA Mexico!  And, fingers crossed I can find a knock-off Timex with a back light.