Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Blah, Blah, Blah...

Ahoy Mateys!

Well we did our first five day cruise without Andy and as a 4 person ensemble. Since Andy left a week earlier than planned, we had to restructure the show for four people. So this meant that we had a bit of extra rehearsal and we got to do some new scenes or scenes we’re not normally in...this version of the show ran for the last cruise and this nine day cruise. Even though we missed Andy, the shows went very well. At the end of this nine day cruise, Martin will join us and we’ll be back to our original show.

Speaking of Andy, Heather gave birth yesterday (3/18/07) to a baby girl!!! All are well and after I get permission from Andy, I’ll post a photo of the little bugger. Yay!!! Baby!!!

The last five day cruise was pretty uneventful. (I just realized that I now measure my life in five and nine day increments. Okay.) Larrance and I had lunch with Tommy, from the Cruise Staff, at Pancho’s Backyard. Pancho’s was recommended by Sue Salvi and it’s fantastic. I recommended the Enchiladas Verde. It was Tommy’s last cruise so we had a nice lunch togehter to wish him farewell.....then we just wandered around Cozumel.

I should mention that the last five day cruise was the height of Spring Break. The ship was overrun with screaming, drunk, half-nude late teens to early twenty year olds. They would spend the whole day drinking and hanging around the pool except when we were in port. Then they’d go ashore to scream, drink, and scream some more. To me they looked like a pack of drunk monkeys. Turns out those drunk monkeys made a pretty good audience - they loved the Stardust show and our second “adult humour” improv show was super packed. We do our improv show in the Spinnaker bar and it seats 360 - I’m almost sure there were 700 screaming, drunk, half-clad, screaming...you get the picture. It felt like we were doing a show in the Thunderdome. But they loved us, they even loved me when I yelled at them to move and threatened to step on their drunk fingers. It was unconditional, drunk, screaming love.

Belize was a ship day. Belize is entering the beginning of its hottest season so sometimes the idea of going ashore without the promise of the ocean or a lake is out of the question.

At the end of the cruise, I got a sllight case of illness. I was awoke in the middle of the night and it lasted for about 24 hours. I feel fine now. I don’t recommend being sick on a ship. The motion of the ship made it even worse.

Now we’re on our next to last nine day cruise....all this time I’ve been working on the schedule for our next season. I’m two hundred pages away from finishing War & Peace. And I have bulging biceps from being in the gym. Well not bulging but slightly defined.

Today we were in Dominica. At breakfast we met up wtih Heather & Katherine, two of the dancers, and we decided to join forces to go to the Emerald Pool Waterfall. The whole group consisted of Heather, Brent (tech director & Heather’s boyfriend), Katherine, Michael, Larrance and me. The Emerald Pool is accessed through a short walk through the rainforest - we timed our visit just right so that one of the cruise ship excursion groups was leaving as we were arriving - so we had the pool all to our selves. The water was cold, fresh and green due to all the algae. It was lovely. I’ll post some pictures on Sunday. We stayed about an hour and just as we were leaving another excursion group (from the Pearl) was coming down. Perfect timing!

From there we went to the “It’s Nice to be Nice” fruit stand. We met Mr. Nice who was a rhyming, fruit selling, business card giving Dominican. He rhymed at us from the moment we got out of the taxi. He had a selection of bananas, pineapples, cocoa beans, raw cocoa, coconuts, grapefruit, boiled banana, salt fish and coconut candy on his table. As well as a bunch of machetes....

The first thing he said to us was, “Okay. You do what you need to do yourself. And I’ll do what I need to do myself. Yourself. Myself. Do what you need to do....YOURSELF. Your. Self. My.Self.”

I was a bit worried that we were going to be in a for an uncomfortable time but then he laid eyes on Heather and his whole mood lightened. Heather had found the coconut candy in a pan - shredded coconut, sugar, water, nutmeg, cinnamon boiled into a candy - and we were set. He loved rhyming her name - Heather is a like a feather,who controls the weather, she wears leather, that’s Heather.” He was stumped by Jen and especially by Larrance. For Larrance he was said, “Larrance? Larrance is like....Larrance.” I’m not kidding. So back to the coconut candy - that stuff was good on everything but it was especially good eaten with a freshly roasted (baked?) cocoa bean or pair all of that with a banana = heaven. So good. The pineapple was sweet and very fresh - like right off the plant by his house. Pineapples grow out of the ground like a shrub...or sort of like an aloe....I thought they came from trees...but no. The stop at “It’s Nice to be Nice” was a bit surreal but worth the time and the small amount of cash.

It was really nice to spend time with Heather, Brent & Katherine. We’ve chatted over drinks but this was our first outing. I hope we can get in a couple more before we have to leave in less than a month!!!

We have plans for the rest of this nine day but I’ll post about those on Sunday.

~Jen

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