Day 11: THURSDAY

Today is our last day on the ship; we have to disembark very early on Friday. I am once again taking advantage of our private balcony, because the weather here is simply gorgeous. It's sunny, about 70 degrees, with just enough puffy white clouds in the sky to keep it from getting too hot. The sea is gray-blue and calm, with the occasional whitecap alongside the ship. We're running through a channel of what I suspect is British Columbia; the scenery consists of huge bulbous mountains – I'm guessing 800 feet or so high, but distance is deceptive over water – covered in dense evergreen forest. We pass the infrequent boat, some private vessels, others tugging huge bundles of logs down the channel.

The whole day hasn't been this sedentary, though. After breakfast, I went to my acupuncture appointment (I can now empathize with Keanu Reeves' stand-in from The Matrix, as I suspect I looked a little like a porcupine with needles in my neck, shoulders, back, hips, hands and ankles). When I was done there, I joined Laura and Jon at the dance session, which was basically a review of what we'd done in the previous three lessons. I didn't have a partner, so I got to dance one round with Patrick. Yay! I like Patrick. Not only is he nice and pleasant to talk to, but he's a brilliant dancer (and he can do things like mid-air splits five feet off the ground, which is probably how he got the job). And, for once, I actually got to dance with a partner who knows how to lead properly! We chatted for a bit about previous cruises and dancing, and Patrick improvised a nice little ending step with a turn and a dip. :) Then another man showed up alone for the class, so I had to relinquish Patrick and go dance with the other guy. He wasn't good at leading, wasn't as cute or talkative as Patrick, and had a tendency to turn me the wrong way, often into furniture. /sigh/ The transition from one partner to the other felt like shifting from a sleek new Porsche to an old VW microbus with a flat tire.

I really need to find some place to dance back home. Oh, and a dance partner would be nice. Preferably one who doesn't smack me in the head on turns or step on my feet during travels.

After the lesson we chatted for about 15 minutes with Leah, the dance captain and the one who (along with Patrick) has been teaching our classes all week. She's very personable; we've talked with her before, after our previous dance classes. We told her how much we'd enjoyed the classes, and what a great job the dancers had done in the production shows. We spent some time sharing stories about failed dance moves and other things that go wrong during stage performances. She said, as we had suspected, that the jumps are the most dangerous to do on a moving vessel because you never know where the floor will be when you come back down. (The daughter of one of Mom's friends worked as a dancer on a cruise line, and she did some serious damage to her foot when she landed wrong on a rocking stage.)

After that, we went and played the last round of Battle of the Sexes trivia. Laura and I helped the women bounce back and win (though at the semifinals, women and men were only one point apart. We won on the final question!).

After that I wandered out to look at scenery, then returned to the room to pack. Our luggage has to be out of the room to be checked by 11 p.m., which is only just after tonight's show ends, so we have to pack everything we're not wearing tonight in advance.

Of course, I got sidetracked by the nice weather and scenery, so Minekura and I are out on the balcony instead of inside packing... :)

Tonight's dinner is casual, and the last show of the cruise will consist of the obnoxious comedian, a performance by Sustained (the a capella group), and excerpts of the video filmed on the ship this week (available for preorder tonight, only $19.95!). Mom and Dad are positive that Laura and I are in the video, because the woman with the camera was following us around the dance floor during swing dancing and the sock hop.

Oh, we're passing a little port now. It looks mostly industrial, with a few barges and a couple of empty piers. Someone is wavehopping on a speed boat about a quarter mile out from our ship. Mom spotted some orcas earlier today, but I haven't seen any marine life since the humpback whales a few days ago.

I'm going to miss this scenery when I get back to Indiana...