No Gain and pictures from St. Lucia

Yesterday was a very wonderful day.  I drove my friends Jonathan and Susan up to the big synagogue in Maitland, just north of Orlando, so Susan could face a Bet Din (court, so to speak) and go to the mikveh (ritual bath) to complete her conversion to Judaism.  She's been on a journey of nearly 25 years to get to this point, and I was the one who put her in touch with our wonderful Rabbi at SOJC to finish this process.  I was honored when she invited me to go along and thrilled when I discovered that I could sit in on the Bet Din and take a peek at the Orlando mikveh.  The only other mikveh I ever saw was the one I used for my conversion in Silver Spring, MD.  This one was much bigger and more beautiful than that one.  Susan was very articulate in her answers to the questions, and when she read aloud the statement of accepting the commandments of Judaism, she broke down crying.  So did I!  What a time that was!  Mazal Tov to Susan!

In the evening Susan, Jonathan, and Tom (a guitarist willing to play with the SOJC choir!) all went out to dinner with me and Mark.  We were going to go to the kosher restaurant, but it was closed for a private party.  Sigh.  So we went just up the road to King of Falafel.  It was delicious.  We shared a lot of appetizers: tabbouleh, fuul (fave beans mashed with other ingredients), pita bread, a tray of falafel, and stuffed grape leaves.  Wow!  I also had the baked fish platter which came with a huge pile of rice, carrots, potatoes, and a cup of lentil soup.  The soup was disappointing because it was pureed, which seemed weird, and very underspiced.  The fish platter was great, although I ate way too much rice, meaning I ate all of it!

The good news is that I lost one more pound, down to 279 this morning.  Yay for me.  The only reason that happened, I guess, is that I ate an especially small breakfast and lunch, walked a half an hour, and lifted the weights.  Plus conducting a ninety minute choir rehearsal definitely expends more energy than sitting in front of the TV.

Today we are heading to the NARFE meeting.  It's now in a new location at a buffet restaurant.  Mark always says the buffet is my friend. I'm going to try to make that true today and eat responsibly.  Dinner is just a slice of Mark's deep dish pizza, 320 calories, so I can splurge a little bit at lunch.  I'm not sure any exercise will happen today, although I might be able to squeeze in a walk late this afternoon.  Tonight we are going to see the Tom Hank's movie, Bridge of Spies, at the Solivita Ballroom.  It's going to be another great day!

St. Lucia was our next port on the cruise.  This is an island I remember well from my visit in 1969 with my parents.  I remember walking inside the volcano, literally around the bubbling sulfur. I was very excited to go back there.  Now no one walks inside because in the mid-1980s a guide was giving a tour when the ground gave way below him.  He fell into hot sulfur and suffered third degree burns.  Although he survived, he gave up touring.  Then the walkways and overlooks were built to keep people out of the actual volcano.  It's still a live volcano that is being monitored constantly because it could erupt any time.

Our all day tour of St. Lucia started in the capital city of Castries.  This is a park in the center of town named for one of the two Nobel Prize Winners who came from St. Lucia.  

St. Lucia is very mountainous with lots of switchback roads.  We are climbing one of the mountains here and can see our ship in port.

Overlooking the famous Marigot Bay harbor.

Our next stop was a little fishing village, where it poured down rain for about five minutes.

Overlooking another village, Canaries, which was the home of our tour guide.

Our first look at the famous Pitons.

Looking from the bus with a zoom lens at the volcano's caldera .

And we have arrived.  It is bubbling sulfur, so you can imagine the smell!

Yes, in 1969, we just walked around in there, stepping around the pools of bubbling springs and sulfur.

This is as close as anyone can get today.

I was proud of myself for getting up here.  It was down 40 steps, across a bridge, up 32 steps, and up a very high, very steep hill to get to this overlook.  I was huffing and puffing when I got there, but I was pleased with myself of doing it.  Then I had to reverse all that to get back.  My legs did hurt the next day!

Heading away from the volcano and looking back at the little village of Soufrier at the base of the Pitons and the volcano of the same name.

We stopped at a restaurant with this spectacular view of Soufrier, and the Pitons.

Back on the ship that night we had a wonderful concert by an Eton John impersonator.  Awesome.