January of Traveling, Pt. 2: Cruising (St Lucia)

We are finally settling into this time zone. We got up around 8:30 a.m. After breakfast, we got our stuff together and headed out to St. Lucia. We decided to just walk around and see what we could see. We got past the crowds of demanding taxi guys and walked in toward town. Some of the first people we saw were a couple of elders in the back of a truck - funny. We kept walking and were soon joined buy a St. Lucian guy, suspiciously making small talk. We chatted with him for awhile and, sure enough, after a couple of minutes he pulled out some little wooden things he had made, pushed them into our hands, and said they were for us. We assumed he wanted us to buy them, which we weren't looking to do, so we didn't want to officially accept them, so we stood there awkwardly for a minute, admiring them and finally said “thank you,” at which point he asked us to pay for them, at which point we gave them back and went our separate ways. Looking back, it might have been fun to buy them, considering we saw almost no authentic markets our whole trip, but since I don't like being manipulated into buying things at home, it didn't occur to me to play along this time.

We kept walking, angled way around one street, and went to walk around a beautiful old cemetery. Pretty much every grave was above ground, and some were massive. Jon thinks it’s to avoid bodies washing out to sea during a hurricane. It was interesting to look at the names and dates on the headstones (some handcarved into the cement before it dried) and think about what their lives might have been like.

We saw some guys working on fixing part of the road, and we even saw a funeral in progress. We went through the cemetery to the other side, and it turned out there was a small, uncrowded, beautiful little beach right there. The cruise line had told us there was no beach within walking distance, which was too bad because we didn’t bring any swimming stuff, so we just walked around and then headed back. I did get to watch some kids playing soccer on the beach and falling flat on their backs over and over. That was hilarious.

The funeral:

We went to lunch and then went to the theater on the ship and saw “The Bourne Legacy," after which we got some quick dinner and then went to see "Moonrise Kingdom" on deck chairs for "Movies Under the Stars." Which, by the way, they brought us blankets and then, partway through the movie, they came through carrying pizza for us and then later came through carrying cookies for us. Awesome.

The indoor theater:

The outdoor theater:

When the movie was over, we went to another ballroom class (the first one being merengue); this time it was cha-cha. It was interesting because they taught international style, which, I was expecting to see American cha-cha, and they started the count on the 1 instead of the 2. I can see this for a cruise ship class, because it can take a long time to teach people to listen for the 2, but it was different ... is there an international-style mambo? The international style actually made it a little harder for me because I am used to doing international figures as part of a routine; I don't know the leads to look for in international figures. It's probably partly because I'm out of practice, but some of the turns in international figures are also much quicker than in American ones. The weird thing was, when I asked the teacher (who moved like he knew what he was doing) what the lead was, he seemed to not understand what I was asking. That was frustrating, because he kept trying to show me what the steps were instead of answering my question. It took three re-phrasings before he got it, and once he did answer it, I am not sure he really even gave the right answer. Oh, well. It was still fun!