August 6, 2005 Mexican Riviera..Who's In?

[Itinkso]

Cathy - It took about 3 weeks for us to receive our passports back in August. This is the beginning of the busy season for passport applications but there should be plenty of time before we sail. When I talked to my TA a couple of weeks ago, she checked to make sure we did have our passports as she was reminding clients that it was best to go ahead and apply for them.

Kazu - Your English is very good indeed. It's too bad my husband is not cruising with us because he is fluent in speaking Japanese. His family is from the Kochi area; he was born in California. I don't speak any Japanese at all. But, I think we'll all be able to communicate just fine. Will you be spending much time at Disneyland and California Adventure?

After beautiful weather all week, it is now cloudy and rainy today. DH was at Science camp all week with his 6th grade class and had a fantastic time. The area was full of wildflowers and all of his students had fun

Have a good weekend everyone! (Brynee is now planning on attending the prom again...1 week to go to find shoes and other necessities)

 

[Catnip0113]

Were you able to understand from the explanation of my poor English?
I think that I wont to be able to speak English well.

Your English is fine at least in writing. Do your daughters speak any English? Teenagers probably can find ways to communicate and do things together. We can work on some things here until August too.

Jenny - Maybe your husband can teach us some inportant phrases in Japanese. The ship related things like places would be said in English. What kinds of things would be good: "Meet us at (time)", things like walking, swimming, dancing, music maybe (thinking of the kids). Weather, waves, sun, shopping.

My father was stationed in Japan during the Korean war and his brother married a Japanese woman. He might know some Japanese, I'll ask him. I doubt he knows the phrases we would need.

Cathy

 

[SchultzFamily]

Kazu, I wanted to tell you my daughter is very interested in learning Japanese she goes to a web site that translates words from english to japanese and has taught herself many words and simple phrases. Her dream is to visit Japan. I will tell her to keep learning and maybe by cruise time she will try to have simple conversations with your family!
Jenny its rainy and yukky here today too. Sara goes to Science camp the week of May 9th. She's looking foreward to it. DH is chaperoning most of the week and I'm staying one night.
Vickie

 

[jilljill]

Kazu,
Your English is very good for someone who doesn't think so. We can all understand you, that is what matters.
I'm sure the kids will be able to communicate with each other in their own 'kid' language.
I want to visit TDR some year. My dream is to visit all 5 resorts in the same year; FL, CA, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. I've done 3 resorts in the same year, so it is something that can be accomplished.



Cathy, I think the gov't wants you to allow 6-8 weeks for receiving you passports in time for your trip. If you send them off in the next couple of weeks you should be fine. I would 'shop' around to see who has the best prices for passport pictures, in our area it is Costco and Kinko's.

 

[Catnip0113]

Cathy, I think the gov't wants you to allow 6-8 weeks for receiving you passports in time for your trip. If you send them off in the next couple of weeks you should be fine. I would 'shop' around to see who has the best prices for passport pictures, in our area it is Costco and Kinko's.

I know they do them at AAA, I wonder if it is included in my Plus membership? I get my Driver's license photo done there (I don't think I had to pay but my memory is bad on things like that).

It is raining hard here today, but we really needed it because it was so dry we were having brush fires. One week the rivers were high and flooding, then it was too dry, now there is flooding again!

Cathy

 

[Itinkso]

AAA does the passport pics and they have all the paperwork to take to the post office or city office. The post office doesn't take credit cards for the passports...only cash or checks.

I may have an English-Japanese dictionary...I'll have to look for it. English is a required subject in Japan so I'm thinking we'll be able to communicate OK. A few years ago we had a Japanese teacher from Visalia's Sister City stay with us for a few days and we had no problems communicating at all.

Has anyone ever tried Xango the mangosteen drink? I've always been interested in it but was afraid to buy it as I thought my DH would think I was . But, he came home with a bottle of it yesterday, a teacher who was a science camp with him sold him on the benefits of it! I'll try it and see if it gives me more energy!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

 

[Kidoctr]

Eve, I was just looking at your sig lines and noticed your honeymoon and anniv. trip dates. Is your anniversary 12/12? That's my DH's b'day.

JillJill - yes, that's our anniversary - back in 1992. We had a beautiful winter wedding in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It had snowed the night before and there was snow on the ground during the day - which was SUNNY! We have a wonderful picture taken of us in front of the chapel standing on a snow covered lawn. That evening, though, it snowed heavily and some of our guests had to leave early to drive back to Santa Fe.

 

[Kidoctr]

There was a sign outside a restaurant advertising their special dessert of the day, but they had limited space on their sign...so it said:

Strawberry Sht Cake

Is that strawberry SHEET cake???? ROTFLOL!!!!

 

[Kidoctr]

Cathy they used to serve key lime pie in Lumiere's for lunch. I had it one day, since the waiter told me I would like it. I didn't like it and told the waiter so, the next thing I know the pastry chef is coming out to me to find out what was wrong with the pie.

WOW - that's impressive that the pastry chef took the time to do that! I've always been impressed with Disney's style - it just makes my eyes tear up!

 

[Kidoctr]

Brynee passed the CA high school exit exam on her first attempt - with a perfect score on the English section Glad that's behind her; in a couple of weeks she'll take the SATs

Have a great weekend everyone

Congrats to Brynee!! Boy, you couldn't PAY me enough to do that SAT stuff again. Yuck! Best of luck - sounds like she'll probably ace it ~

 

[Kidoctr]

I finally found our birth certificates, I had misplaced them. Is it too late to apply for passports for August? I will call my TA and ask. I also need to find out when you make reservations on the REAS pkg.

Geez, I hope not! We misplaced our passports and I still have the applications (all filled out) on my desk. We just haven't gotten around to getting the pics done. I think 3 months is still plenty of time to get one. Let me know if your TA thinks differently!

 

[Kidoctr]

Jenny,Stacey,Barb and Cathy.
I am glad to get your answer.

I am not good at English.

My name is Kazu and with my wife,16 yr old daughter,14 yr old daughter and 10 yr old son on the cruise.
This time is our cruise of the second times.
We went to the cruise of four night stays two years ago.

But DLR is the first time.
We are looking forward to go to DLR and Disney cruise very much.

Thank you.

Welcome Kazu! My name is Eve and I have a daughter who will be 8 on the cruise and a son who will be 6. Oh yeah, my husband will be with us too. We're going to Disneyland for 3 days before we get on the ship. I'm Chinese but live in the US. Your English is a whole lot better than my Chinese (or Japanese for that matter! ). Hope to learn more about you and your family. Do you know what cabin you are in? Which dinner seating do you have? Where do you live in Japan?

 

[Kidoctr]

Boy, did I get behind there! Now I'm all caught up. The kids had their violin recital on Friday evening in another town so we got home really late - no online time. Got up on Sat morning to do the March of Dimes WalkAmerica and then we finished up the gigantic swing set from Sam's Club that we started putting together over a WEEK ago! We were wiped out last night - no online time again. Got a LOT done around the house today and I'm finally sitting down long enough to get online. The weather here was gorgeous - maybe a bit cold for the WalkAmerica - in the 50's and 60's. Weird because we were in the 80's earlier last week! Hope everyone had as productive a weekend as we did!

 

[SchultzFamily]

Jenny, I had missed your post about Brynee passing the High School exit exam, I'm glad Eve quoted you.
Congratulations to Brynee!!
Kenney hasn't gotten his results yet.
Vickie

 

[justmestace]

Hello everyone! I'm still here. I survived the weekend in spite of the efforts of my family members to attempt to drive me crazy! It was just one of those weekends. I got nothing done, did nothing....mostly just trying to stay one step ahead of the family.

Sadly, there is no school tomorrow, so I am still stuck with the younger two. I have to take Jordan to get a dress for 8th grade graduation. She's singing at the ceremony and reading a speech. I was hoping it would be a speech someone else had written, but she wrote it. I'm almost afraid to hear what it may say! If you knew her, you'd know what I mean........she's very......blonde ??

Anyway....happy Monday to you all!

 

[jilljill]

Stacey, fortunately for me Alexa has school today. They were supposed to have off, but fortunately for us they are using it as a snow make up day. I guess that means snow is good for something once in a while.

Eve, I'm glad you were able to get caught up with everyone. Sounds like you had a very busy weekend.

 

[Catnip0113]

:
Sadly, there is no school tomorrow, so I am still stuck with the younger two. I have to take Jordan to get a dress for 8th grade graduation. She's singing at the ceremony and reading a speech.
Anyway....happy Monday to you all!

I didn't know Jordan was just in 8th grade because so is Jessica. We don't know what is happening for graduation yet, but there is a ceremony.

Cathy

 

[Catnip0113]

Bumping from page 2... My sister is back from her 4/16 Eastern Magic and she loved it. She especially liked the Cove Cafe to sip specialty coffee and read. The kids were off in the clubs and exploring. Her servers were great too. After talking to her I am really getting more excited for our cruise now.

My DH wants to go on a different cruise line next, but I am thinking about rebooking onboard for 2007 or as far ahead as you can go and move it later.
I need to have a thread on here to go to, but I am not sure if all of them are as good as this one. Some have so few posts!

Cathy

 

[jilljill]

I was also thinking about rebooking for 2007, but I really want to visit friends in England whom we haven't seen in several years. What to do, what to do??

 

[jilljill]

Here's a link to an article from one of the FL newspaper's about the Magic cruising out of CA:

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050423/BUSINESS/504230313/1003