Overnight we passed within 150 miles of the island on which a young American Missionary was recently killed by a tribe that doesn't want any outside contact. This was according to Captain Arno Jutten's noon metereological and navigational briefing the day before.
Today was a very full day of EXC lectures. For those who are interested in this new format, based on the first week on the cruise, it's as good as the first segment we sailed on out of Fort Lauderdale last September. There's a good quantity of lectures with high quality. One of the themes that really should have been emphasized early is the photography theme and particularly the phoneography sub theme. With all these amazing new sights, lots of pictures will be taken, and some instruction would be helpful plus it gives the photographers a chance to connect.
In terms of lectures, Brett gave a port talk on Tricomalee and Hambatota, Terry Greenberg presented on Buddhism and Hinduism. Chris Cook gave one of the best coral presentations I've seen and included an audience participation activity on coral reproduction. Ashok Ferrey presented part 1 of his series on Sri Lankan Architecture and in reference to over 500 years of colonial occupation and control, he said it was like the colonialists were "Playing cards with other people's countries". It turned out that Ashok is a builder first, an author second, and lectures in an architecture school on colonial architecture.
We walked the deck a bit and observed a number of flying fish. But it was very hot at 93°! For dinner we chose to eat in the Caneletto (Italian cuisine) with Carol and John. It was wonderful and we returned after the show for dessert.
Ashok gave an Evening Insight short program on 20th Century Sri Lankan art. This was followed by Andy Bünger, a German multi-instrumentalist.
We have one more sea day until we reach our first port at Tricomalee. Stay tuned
Thanks for the great blog! It's fun to see a preview of what we'll be doing when we join in, in July, from San Fran to Japan!
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