Randiandersen's travel blogs:
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Day 40
Entry 49 of 92 | show all | print this entry |
It'll be a short one today since we didn't do much. I spent the morning on the ship trying to work, and I imagine I must have done something since I didn't leave the ship until like 1:00. Today we were going to the IMAX. We'd been seeing advertisements for Robots and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix all over the Malecón for days and Stephanie finally made up her mind to go. A bunch of friends decided to come with us too, and after Stephanie and I spent over an hour searching the internet for show times, Ashley found them in just a few minutes with a Google search. We were pretty frustrated actually, since we'd spent so much time trying to navigate really badly designed websites in Spanish and hadn't been able to get close to finding anything remotely resembling show times. Anyway we had the show times finally and took the shuttle into town with plenty of time to catch the 2:30 showing of Harry Potter. Turns out the movie was at 2:00; Ashley's show times turned out to be wrong, but we were still there in time to buy popcorn (which I never do but did anyway) and sit for a few minutes before going in and getting our seats. There were probably 25 people in the theatre for this movie, and we were able to get great seats in the very center near the top where we could see the entire screen - very important in IMAX.
We expected the movie to be in either English with Spanish subtitles or Spanish with English subtitles, but there were no subtitles at all. Most of my friends couldn't understand a word but I could, especially since I'd seen the movie before, and every time Ashley asked me what was going on I was able to answer her. I really enjoyed watching the movie in Spanish actually, and I feel like I learned a little bit at least. And watching Harry Potter on IMAX was incredible. All that flying and the thestrals and everything. Wow. Except for the kissing scene in the Room of Requirement... that was a little too much blown up to 100 times its usual size! It wouldn't have been bad if it had just been a kiss but it was a full-blown make-out session in IMAX 3-D and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one squirming. Aiee.
Well anyway that's about all to report about the movie. We wandered around a little after that; a couple people wanted to go shopping so Stephanie and I just kind of followed them around. We ended up in a really sketchy shopping district, a bunch of aluminum kiosk things set up back to back and on both sides of a really narrow street and people pushing their stuff at you at every possible opportunity and following you down the road with it. It was like in Mexico on the beaches at resorts with people trying to sell you things, only times about 6. Honestly. It was ridiculous. Stephanie and I lasted about five minutes, we lost Tristan and Davis, the only guys who'd come with us, and Ashley and Ashley were ahead somewhere in the shops and we didn't want to go in after them so we figured they'd left us and we should get out of there and get back to the park so we wouldn't miss the shuttle. We made it back to the park just in time, having met up with the boys just outside the shops, and after a few minutes the Ashleys came up behind us. We'd thought they'd probably take a cab, but we were glad they'd caught up and we at least knew they hadn't been accosted by some crazy merchant and couldn't get out or something.
We went back to the ship and had dinner, and at dinner one of the wait staff (I realized later that I didn't know his name) asked me, "Where's your boyfriend?" I told him I don't have one, he said yes you do; I said no, I don't have a boyfriend, and he said yes you do I see him with you every morning. I finally realized he was talking about my computer - I bring my computer to breakfast with me every day to try to catch up on my blogs and I'm always sitting in the same place writing frantically after I eat breakfast. It struck me that this is what it looked like my social life was like: sitting in the same chair eating the same thing working on the computer and not talking to anyone. But that wasn't true, really, people came and joined me all the time, and I wasn't playing on the internet I was getting things done. I didn't take my computer to breakfast any more after that, and I worked really hard to spend the time at breakfast looking at the ocean and watching the people around me and chatting a little with some of the crew and the other students.
A couple of days later one of the Reception staff, Rodrigo, left the staff for good. He was the best person to talk to about anything and my favorite staff person just because he was so nice. I was so sad to see him go and I didn't ever take the initiative to get to know him or even ask where he was from or tell him I appreciated him. I still miss him every time I go to reception with a question because he was the one I always looked for. So the next morning I caught my cabin steward, Nina, in the hallway and asked her where she was from. She's from Bulgaria, and she's contracted for 8 months but she thinks she might leave after four because she is homesick and isn't enjoying the work very much. It was hard to carry on much of a conversation because of the language barrier and I felt so bad that I couldn't think of other things to ask her, but I love talking to her and she takes such good care of all of us. I also asked the man who asked me about my boyfriend what his name is. It's Edwin.
Latest Comments (1)
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wahoo! new blogs! (reply)
Nov 19, 2007 10:35 EST by toyladyterri
Harry Potter in IMAX - that's the coolest! And I'm proud of you for being more assertive about getting to know people - since I'm quite backwards myself that way, I know how hard it can be. You go girl! LOVE YA!!!! Mom
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