Final Cruise Dinner

Our final cruise dinner and planning meeting was held on January 29th at Linda's. We used this time to review all the things we need to bring along on this cruise. The list is long! We are all wondering how we are going to pack everything into our suitcase.

We also checked out the onshore excursions and even booked our tours for Panama and Costa Rica. The excitement is building everyday and the days are flying by so fast. The "to-do" lists are long for some of us.


We have all been spending time in tanning booths in preparation of this trip so during this meeting we had to compare the color of our arms. It is hard to see in this photo, but we are all getting "some" color to our skin. Our ultimate goal is to not get too sunburned on the cruise. Yes, we are all bringing lots of sunscreen.

Waves of White

As we traveled to Wyndmere, ND recently we just had to stop and take a photo of the "waves of white" that lay on the landscape of SE North Dakota. In just a few more days we are hoping to replace this view with one of "waves of aqua."

Flirting 101

We are not sure who's idea this was but on January 26, co-worker, Rachelle gave us "flirting" lessons. Obviously she has a lot more experience than the rest of us since she is teaching the class. Let me make one thing clear, none of us are going on this cruise to "find a man." But the flirting class did prepare us for feeling more comfortable when talking to other cruisers.

Room Assignments

Yahoo! We got our room assignments. We found out that we have been upgraded a whole deck. We are scheduled to be in Verandah staterooms 7011 and 7007 on the Rotterdam Deck. We are so excited! Only 15 more days before we leave. Some of us have started to pack. Some of us are getting nice tans. Some of us are wondering how we will get everything done before we leave. But we know it will all work out in the end as we look forward to this dream vacation!

Picking Up the Cruise Documents

Sharon stopped by AAA and picked up our cruise documents on December 31, 2008. Hopefully this won't be one of the outfits she will be wearing on the cruise!

Thundar is Cruising With Us!

Since all four of us work at NDSU we were excited to find out that Thundar, the NDSU Bison mascot, could come along with us on the cruise. (At least a stuffed version of him will be coming along in one of our suitcases.) He even joined us at Barb's for dinner. You can see him grazing on the veggies in this photos. We know this will make JGR very happy.

We are going to try our best to make sure that Thundar has a great time with us on the cruise!

Dinner Meetings

We decided early in our planning process that we wanted to learn all we could about our cruise and be prepared when we left, so we decided to have "dinner meetings" at each of our homes over the course of the next 3 months. We started with at great first meeting at Sharon's on November 6th. Our second dinner was at Rita's on December 16th. Next we met at Barb's on January 6th. Our final dinner will be at Linda's on January 29, just one week before we leave on our cruise!

Besides have great food, these meetings were times for laughing, planning, getting to know each other and sharing our excitement for this trip.

Planning for the Cruise

After much research, four friends (Barb, Linda, Rita and Sharon) from ND decided to cruise to the Panama Canal in February 2009. We worked with our travel agent, Donna, at AAA in Fargo and made our final payment on November 11, 2008.

Little did we know there was so much to learn about cruising! We are booked on the Holland America cruise ship Zuiderdam. Our plans are to fly out of Fargo the morning of February 6, spend the night in Ft. Lauderdale and set sail on February 7for our 10 day cruise to the Southern Caribbean and the Panama Canal. The cruise will stop at Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas, Aruba, Curacao, the Panama Canal and Costa Rica.

Excited is just one word that would describe how we feel as we purchased our tickets, made sure our passports were up to date, talked about what to pack, visit customs, shop for clothes, get a start on our tan, share what we have learned from other cruisers, and wait for the day we get to leave all this snow behind. After the winter we have had we are anxious to get away to some warm places.

We hope to share this adventure with you through this blog.