The weather was rather gray and foggy with intermittent sunshine and light rain. The morning’s activities included the Morning Show hosted by Jorge who interviewed America’s Test Kitchen chef Spencer. They showed some great photos of Spencer when he had a huge mohawk haircut and looked more like a punk rocker than a wrestler chef.

EXC Guide Ian spoke about our upcoming ports of call in Apia and Pago Pago, Samoa. Next up was guest speaker Professor David Horner who spoke about the Pacific Islands Today. His idea about today is the last twenty years or so including a lot of political unrest, discussions about migration from smaller islands to larger cities and the threat of rising sea levels to many islands. Some islands believe it may be necessary to vacate their islands due to global warming and rising sea levels. Some are in negotiations with places like Australia to move the residents of their islands when rising sea levels occur.

As we have continued to cruise east we have gradually been moving the clocks forward by one or two hours per day. On this day we moved the clocks forward an hour at 2:00pm. The afternoon lecture was by Dr. Joe Kess who spoke on Discovering the Pacific. He discussed many of the early Spanish and European explorers who sailed the Pacific mapping the islands and claiming lands for their mother countries.

In the late afternoon there was an Aloha Music Hour featuring three Hawaiian ambassadors onboard to show us a bit about the Hawaiian culture. One of them played the ukulele while the other two danced to the songs. They also gave out some prizes (Things like chocolate covered macadamia nuts and refrigerator magnets) for those who could answer questions about Hawaii.

Each night they have had special Hanukkah celebrations with candle lighting ceremonies for those who are interested. We had dinner with a lovely couple that we met on the World Cruise in 2013. Heidi is from Germany and Andres is from Puerto Rico.

The evening’s entertainment was a comedian by the name of John Wing from Los Angeles. He had a lot of jokes related to when he grew up…and jokes about aging. He was very funny and the audience seemed to relate to most of his jokes.