The MS Amsterdam, one of Holland America’s mid-sized cruise ships, was at sea all day today passing north and in sight of Cuba at 19 knots or about 21 miles per hour. It feels faster and, at this moment, the wind is creating quite a roll. I enjoy being one of 1380 guests, pampered by 604 crew members in 6 restaurants, 9 lounges, 6 entertainment venues, a fitness center, spa & salon, 2 swimming pools, several shops, a library, game room and casino.

So many activities were offered, I was frustrated when I wanted to do three things at once. In addition to all the ship’s activities, Road Scholar offered the first of our daily lectures during days at sea. This lecture series, presented by Dr. Catherine Skokan, a geophysical engineer, includes lectures on plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes, all of which are significant to Central America and the Pacific Basin, where we are headed.

Not all is serious and educational. My Mah Jongg buddies may be interested to know that I met about twenty Mah Jongg players and won the first of four games. This evening’s show featured Jeff Burghart, a comedian who has been seen on Comedy Central and Star Search. His routine was hilarious. Before we learned that the stars are flown in and out to different ships, we said a comedian would have to be good to keep us laughing for four months. After hearing him, I think Jeff could keep me laughing the whole way. More tomorrow.

We embarked at 9 PM tonight from Ft. Lauderdale aboard the MS Amsterdam on the trip I have dreamed about doing for 25 years and prepared to do for the past year. We sail around the world for the next four months, a once in a lifetime trip many have said and I have thought. Today, I learned it may not be a once in a lifetime trip.

As we waited in a long line to board the ship this morning, I met Richard and Barbara, whose photo I have attached with their permission. This is the fourth time they have sailed around the world. Richard talked with us for an hour about the places we are going to see. He’s been there already but signed on to go again. Across the rope I spoke with a lady and her sister who are doing their fifth around the world cruise. They already know where this ship goes in 2020! We counted at least a dozen people who have done this trip at least once before this.

As I type this, loving that little roll that you feel when you are moving fast at sea, I am blessed not to be seasick, grateful for this opportunity whether or not it is a once in a lifetime trip for me, and grateful that tech-challenged as I am the internet appears to be working. We are at sea for the next two days on our way to Santa Marta, Colombia. Check in tomorrow and I will tell you about the ship.

With only eight days until I leave home to go around the world, I feel excited and panicked. So many little things that must be done come to mind. One delightful unexpected thing is a round of Bon Voyage gatherings. My friends, JoAnn, Matt, Gayle and Jim, took me out for a Bon Voyage dinner. Mary Anne made me this beautiful card, and my Mah Jongg buddies wrote wishes and signed it. Monday, my yoga class ended with a toast to my trip and the New Year with mimosas and next Monday, my book club is going to meet a week early so I can attend. What unexpected fun!

My nephew, Drew, who has moved in to watch my house, made me realize something also unexpected. The things that I take with me will be special in a way; they will have been around the world. He is currently deciding what of his belongings he wants me to take for him. This made me think more carefully about what I take. I decided for one thing, I want to take photos of people I love, take you with me in a way.

While the bags are unpacked and the credit card companies won’t allow me to say more than ten countries I will visit, I am taking photos on the iPad to take with me. I know what is important, the people I both leave behind and take with me, on my iPad and in my heart.

This past advent season I read We Hear the Angels: Ancient Prayers for Advent by JoAnn Streeter Shade. This collection of advent prayers through the centuries includes a prayer  written by Frank Borman and broadcast on Christmas Eve 1968 while he orbited the moon as part of the Apollo 8 mission.

Give us, O God, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure. Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness. Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts. And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace.

Perhaps because I am excited about my soon to begin around-the-world cruise, this prayer resonated with me. I do hope not only to see love and goodness in the world but to share it and in that sharing do my bit for that universal peace. May this be a prayer for all of us in the New Year.

I’ve been reading the twenty-three books recommended by Road Scholar for our World Academy trip coming in January rather than writing. Pitcairn Island, one of our stops, is two square miles of volcano whose claim to fame is that it is the island where Fletcher Christian, his fellow mutineers, and their Tahitian wives settled after the mutiny on the Bounty. While it isn’t one of the twenty-three books, I also read Mutiny on the Bounty. Did you know it is the first of a trilogy about the mutiny? I hope to read the other two, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairn’s Island.

Pitcairn’s remote location in the southeast Pacific was one of the necessary features of an island that would serve Christian’s purposes.  He needed an island that would not have English ships visiting, but such isolation comes with a price. According to Simon Winchester in his book, Pacific, there are few descendants of the original settlers remaining on the island which is expected to become uninhabited by 2030.

The island’s only industry is bee-keeping and very minimal tourism. As one of few visitors next year, I plan to buy honey and postcards to contribute to the local economy. I’ll have to see it before I know whether I will hike up the volcanic mountain that comes right up to the port of entry.  According to Winchester, it is a monstrous hill.

The San Blas Islands, an archipelago of 378 islands of which only 50 are populated by an indigenous people called Kuna, are the most popular tourist destination of the Panamanian and Central American people, though little known by others. They are located northeast of the Isthmus of Panama and cover 100 square miles. Our first day in Panama will be spent there. I am not sure what we will do, but the main form of transportation is sailing so how could it be bad?

Our second day in Panama will be spent traversing the Panama Canal. The canal, built between 1904 and 1914 by the US Army Corps of Engineers after an earlier attempt by France was doomed by yellow fever and malaria, belonged to the US until December 31, 1999 when its ownership reverted to Panama. It was expanded between 2007 and 2016 to create a third lane and double cargo capacity. It will take our cruise ship a whole day to traverse the canal at a fare of over $100,000. The canal, which connects the Caribbean Sea on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, actually runs in a north-south direction with locks on both the northern and southern sides with lakes in the middle.

Finally, we visit Panama City which is Panama’s capital and largest city, home to over 2 million people, half of Panama’s population. One of the most interesting features of the city is Parque Natural Metropolitano located on Ancon Hill. This is a 265 hectare (654 acres) tropical semi-deciduous forest within the city limits which is home to over 250 kinds of birds, monkeys, antelope, sloths, and white-tailed deer.  A summit look-out in the park has views of the canal and the bay. A canal museum, housed in the original French Canal Company’s headquarters, honors the 22,000 French workers who died trying to build the canal and has a monument to Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor who discovered that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever. Stay tuned in January to find out what I actually get to see and do.

My annual visual fields test was today. Everyone I know, including me, hates this test where you stare at a light for an average of six minutes and press a button every time you see a light flash in your peripheral vision. The flashes may be bright or dim, sharp or fuzzy, closely spaced or separated. You don’t know when to blink and after a few minutes, you begin to think you imagined that last flash.

Last year I decided there was no benefit to complaining about my visual fields test and with a different attitude I didn’t mind it so much. This year I decided to upgrade my attitude even further and think of something for which I am grateful each time I saw a light flash. If nothing else, I could always be grateful that I was able to see each light.

An attitude of gratitude transformed my experience of the visual fields test. For the first time I realized what a blessing it is that I could see those lights after ten years of glaucoma. I was even grateful that I was able to do the test, able to remember what I was doing for six minutes. My doctor laughed when I told him it could just as well be a test for dementia.

A recent trip to Costa Rica made me acutely aware of both the good and bad that human beings do to the environment so I decided not to use weed killer on my lawn this year. As a homework assignment at a three-week seminar on ecology and theology at the Lexington Theological Seminary, we were asked to write a short statement personifying something in nature. Here’s my assignment.

“What are you so happy about?” A violet asks the dandelion. “I just overheard our owner say she’s not using weed killer on us this year.” “Well, that’s good news.” “She probably would have decided that sooner, if just you violets were in the yard. Humans like your little purple flowers. They don’t mind me so much when I’m just yellow flowers, but when I rise up with the fuzz balls to send my children off, I feel like Rosa Parks on the bus. It is not just humans that suffer because of hatred.”

So with apologies to my neighbors with perfect yards, I will have dandelions and violets, chickweed, and crab grass but I won’t be adding poison to the lake. Have you ever read what it says on the bags of lawn weed killers?

Since the announcement of my “trip of a lifetime” several readers have assumed that it begins this summer. Not so. The Road Scholar World Academy: Around the World in 115 Days begins January 22, 2019. I started my research early because there is much to learn.

Our first port of call on January 25, 2019 will be Santa Marta, Colombia. Santa Marta sits on the northern coast of Colombia about 600 miles from Bogotá and not far from the border of Venezuela. Founded by Spanish conquistador, Rodrigo de Bastidas, Santa Marta is the first Spanish settlement and oldest surviving city in Colombia. It is most famous as the place where Simon Bolivar died of tuberculosis in 1830 at the age of 47.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela to wealthy parents, Bolivar was educated in Spain after he was orphaned at a young age.  While in Europe he was a friend of Napoleon. Bolivar, who envisioned a South American country much like the USA, was instrumental in the liberation of many South American countries from Spain. Bolivar’s home in Santa Marta is called La Quinta de San Pedro. I hope that is one of the places I will get to see. If you come back to this site in January, I will be warm (unlike today) and I will let you know what I have seen.

Ft. Lauderdale, located 28 miles north of Miami on the Atlantic coast of Florida, is named for an abandoned fort built by soldiers of the US government under the leadership of Major William Lauderdale during the Seminole Wars from 1838 to 1842. Fifty years after the fort was abandoned the city began in the 1890’s. Today Ft. Lauderdale is home to Port Everglades, the third busiest cruise port in the US. Over 40 ships pass in and out of this port annually and on one of them next year, I am going to begin and end the trip of a lifetime.

I don’t mind publicizing this as someone will be living in my home during the four months I will be living on the ms Amsterdam and traveling around the world. My intent is to use this means of sharing my adventures with friends and family, hopefully with photos if I can get my tech skills up to speed.

As I prepare to go, I will share what I learn. For instance, there are 28 pages in a standard passport for visa stamps. Road Scholar, my trip organizer, says I will need 35 pages so I have to apply for a “large book” passport which has 52 pages. It is a simple process and requires only a check on the normal passport application and no extra charge. Who knew? Stay tuned.