Massage, Peru, Accapella

Today I got a massage from the spa. This is because my back is a mess, which is what I wrote on the “why are you getting this massage?” form. Which means a soft spoken gentleman from the Phillipines said “your back is a mess?” which was pretty funny. If you want to delight a person from the Phillipines and you look white and boring, tell them there is a Jolly Bee in Los Angeles. This is their McDonald’s equivalent.

A nice thing to know on cruise ships is that there is a speaker in every possible room. There is a speaker in the massage rooms. So when a masseuse is asking you personalized and gentle questions with gentle asian flutes in the background, you will hear a “THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN. MESSAGE FROM THE BRIDGE! THE GANGWAY WILL NOW BE LOCATED ON THE STARBOARD SIDE! THAT IS DECK 5! DECK 7 IS NO LONGER IN USE! THANK YOU! ENJOY YOUR DAY!”

I got a lesson in international politics from a girl from Peru who is also a youth counselor. I know a little bit about the state of that country from Marion, and it is a mess/developing nation. Suddenly there are very few eastern Europeans on the ship, and a lot more people from Peru. She was an au pair in Germany, meaning she speaks German, Spanish and English (oh, heh) and has lots of stories. Like how her first boss in Germany tried to defraud the government ooooor how she taught Spanish in her off hours. My favorite story is that she would clean the house where she was an au pair for extra money. She said “it is so easy! You have all these chemicals! You don’t to do any work! You just spray and…that’s it!” I want to tell her about a Roomba. I do not want to tell her the average amount of cleaning me and my friends will do. I’m sure there is somewhere where cleaning involves pressing a button but the people who live there hate pressing the button so they hire someone to do it and feel bad for people who have to press other people’s buttons. And the button people are like “uh…you want to give me money? For pressing a button? Okay freak!”

There is an a cappella group on board now. They look about 22, but apparently have been around for 8 years. I got the information from one of the singers in the production cast. Apparently, there is a very VERY small world of professional a cappella singers and they all know each other. One person in this group only beatboxes, which should be pretty hilarious to watch someone do for a bunch of people in their seventies who don’t entirely follow the scene we do about instant messaging.

Visual presents:
One 80-lb. old lady looks like Beaker with glasses. She is lively and my favorite. Another older gentleman chose shorts which fit his (very giant) waist very well. His legs are not in proportion, so he has two bells with a clanging inner stick that are his legs. He frowns a lot.

If I had a spy camera, I would take a photo of two women, sitting in the exact same position two tables away from one another. They have the same hair cut (short, curled) and the same earrings (1-inch hoops) and were eating in the same way. One woman looked like she was sitting in a tiny joke chair. She was not.