Cruise Day 2

December 24th - St. Maarten
(Written Dec. 25th)

Merry Christmas everybody! Wish you were here!

Well, Yesterday was 1/2 day at sea, 1/2 day in St. Maarten. Carrie and Dad decided to go on a snorkel trip while the rest of us just wandered around Philipsburg. And by 'wandering around' I mean 'walking past about 600 liquor and/or jewelry shops.' Unfortunately, as we are not booze and diamond types, this left us with a whole lot of meandering and not a lot of shopping. To prove what a wild bunch we are, here's a complete list of expenditures on St. Maarten for the 6 of us:

-2 Snorkel trips
-4 Froo-froo non-alcoholic drinks (Woo-Hoo!)
-1 Stick of deodorant
-1 Tube of foot cream
-$2 donated to the St. Maarten Animal Humane Society
-1 Scarf (an actual souvenir)

My brother-in-law doing his part to keep the Caribbean economy strong!

This was the first port we went to that was really built for tourism. We were the 5th cruiser at the dock, so it was kind of interesting to see how the immediate pandemonium disperses as you get further and further away from the boat. If you were a shop owner, the difference in traffic you would see just by being half a block closer or farther would be pretty severe. And frankly, how do you sell YOUR jewelry when there's 599 other jewelry stores in a 3 block radius?

Anyway, here's my deep thought of the day: This cruise reminds me of high school. It might be because it's about the size of my alma mater... But there's also the same kind of weird social circles. It seems like there are certain people that you run into constantly and others that just kind of appear once and then you never see them again. Or is it that you only take note of certain people and the rest of the faces just fill the gaps? I don't know, but I've 'just run into' family members several times accidentally at weird times in strange places. (Remember, this is like a 10 story hotel, it just shouldn't happen that often...) There's also another family with exactly the same schedule as us (same flight, hotel, and dining time) which is kind of awkward.

So last night was our first formal dinner which wasn't as goofy as I thought it was going to be. I expected to feel really out of place, but the staff treats you the same (i.e. really well) so it didn't feel forced. Where I'm going with this though is that there are several pictures of me attempting to look debonair or anti-debonair.

Not fooling anybody...

But the highlight was later in the evening when Chris said, "So, how's the ice cream, sugarpants?" and I heard, "So, how's the ice cream, (Not-Sugar-but-another-word-that-starts-with-SH...) yer pants?" I think I replied with something like, "Well, it's good, but it's not THAT good" and then had to explain what I heard. Needless to say we've been giggling about it ever since, because, you know, Chris asks me that kind of question all the time. The rest of the family is totally out of the loop on this one, as we've been incorporating 'Sugarpants' into conversation and then snickering quietly.