Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Wednesday – March 21, 2018

This is a welcome sea day. It is the first of three sea days on our way to Seychelles. We spent it relaxing somewhat as we again attended lectures and rafts. The highlight for me was attending the Sari wrapping demonstration in the afternoon. The lesson the shopkeeper gave us yesterday was quick. I did not retain a lot of it. Now Barbara, our port lecturer, was demonstrating the process for us. Because Alice was attending a computer class, it was up to me to attend the sari class. I filmed the whole thing with my phone. The 9-minute film would be watched many times. I went home to wait for Alice.

When she arrived, we started to practice dressing her. It was 4:00. We watched the video together. Alice donned the necessary slacks with elastic waist and we tucked the end of the sari into the waist. The fabric is rather shear so we wrapped it around twice before creating the pleats in the front. These are to allow ease of walking while maintaining modesty. Then we brought the fabric around and over the shoulder. Wow! This looked pretty good. This had gone so well that we decided that starting to dress at 5:15 would allow enough time to meet Roger and Sandy for dinner at 5:45.

Hah! We did start at 5:15, but for some reason we were not as successful as earlier. After several tries, we were satisfied. Alice looked beautiful. We proceeded to the dining room. It was almost 6:00. We apologized profusely to Sandy and Roger. They are so gracious they immediately put us at ease. They were afraid we had forgotten our date. Dinner was delicious. The conversation was delightful. It was fun to catch up on what we all had done in the past two weeks.

The only disappointment of the evening was how few of the ladies had worn saris for the occasion. We do not think we saw more than 10 saris aside from those worn by staff. After leaving Sandy and Roger we went to our regular table on deck 4. We wanted to get pictures of our stewards, Eben and Made and the dining room hostess, Intan. They were very surprised and pleased to see us, and highly complimented Alice on her sari. Next we attended the entertainment. Again, Alice was the exception. We had a grand evening.