Carnival ride!

Ino vaovao? (what's up?)

I've taken both forms of local transportation and I have to say that I certainly prefer a tuk-tuk over a pousse-pousse. A tuk-tuk is a little three wheeled car. A pousse-pousse is a man powered bicycle attached to a little carriage. You can't even see out of a pousse-pousse without being hunched over and you are quite squished with two people. Since I really don't like touching, it is not my preferred method of transportation. I've got some serious respect for the drivers through, they are going to be jacked when the ship leaves, from peddling us all over the place!

Tuk-tuks

Pousse-pousse from behind

On Wednesday I went out for dinner with a friend and had an AMAZING lentil stew. Oh lentils, how I love your iron content. Anyway, we got there at 6:00 and they said the kitchen didn't open until 6:30. That's fine we sat and had a drink (I inadvertently order beer, but it was more like cider and it was delicious). They took our orders at 6:45ish and we didn't eat until 7:30. Crazy. Anyway, I ended up with the best thing ever because I told the waiter I was vegetarian and he made some off the menu suggestions! So lesson learned about eating out.  Unfortunately, the sun goes down at 5:30 and it is completely dark by 6 so even if you have good intentions to get somewhere early so you can start heading back to the ship early, you'll never make it back while the sun is still up. Oh well, there isn't a whole lot I can do because I don't finish work until 5 so most times I don't even get off the ship in the evening because it is already dark!

On another note, I went on a boy-powered ferris wheel today. It was mildly terrifying but mostly entertaining beyond belief. I was held in by a chain across my waist and there was no stopping mechanism; just the boys jumping on the wheel to counteract the momentum. It was funny to me because my mom would never let me go on the rides that would get set up in the parking lot of a plaza near my Nonna's house because she was worried they weren't safe. Well mom, I'm pretty sure they were safer than this...

Another reason the ship is awesome:

I was talking to one of the mom's on the ship and she explained that her son fell during gym while playing flag football. She was completely fine that he fell because she knows that kids fall. The benefit to living on the ship in this instance was that he had gotten x-rayed, had a consult from an orthopedic surgeon, and then made the physical therapists excited because they got to put a cast on him! This all happened within a couple of hours of the incident occurring. This is the opposite of home, where you often have to wait in the emergency waiting room for hours before getting seen, never-mind treated. So if people are going to get hurt this is a fine place to do it!