New Friends

We’re back from a wonderful 15-night Panama Canal cruise. That brings Michaela’s total countries visited to 11 and mine to 17. So many more to go!!!

One of the best things about this trip is that we made some very lovely friends. All of us — Mike, Michaela, and I. There was a family from Scotland who had an almost 5-year-old daughter and a family from the US that lives in Mexico City who have a 5-year-old son, and all of us — the moms and dads and parents (the Scots had her mom along and the Americans had his mom, dad, aunt, and uncle with them, and we had Nana and Papa) and kids — really hit it off. It made for such a great trip!

As on our last trip, Michaela enjoyed the ship’s kids’ club. This time she had multiple friends to hang out with. While the kids were doing that, us parents were in the bar, having martinis, and playing trivia. Go Team Fun Factory! (Yes, we named our team after the kids’ club. That’s what brought us together, after all!)

We had a seriously giant wrap-around balcony in our room and hosted several sail away parties, where our new friends and their relatives came and we drank wine and had snacks and watched whatever port of call get smaller in the distance.

And on our last night on the ship, we all headed to the Constellation Lounge (the forward bar/lounge on the top deck of the ship) for a Fun Factory talent show. Michaela drew a picture, her new friend Isla sang a song, and her new friend Sebastian danced– with all the other young kids doing backup for him. And each of those kids had a 13-person strong cheering section to celebrate.

I’m always sad to leave vacations. It’s really hard to go back to the real world! But this time I was even more sad because it felt like we were leaving a community. Fortunately, thanks to Facebook, we’ll stay connected. And who knows, maybe we’ll arrange a visit someday…