Day 14 – Bridge at Sea

Every day at sea for these two weeks I have been taking beginning bridge lessons. Bridge is a strange game to play because the lessons consist of how to bid so your partner, and opponents, knows everything in your hand so they can make a decision to play or pass. I guess it is a little more complicated than that, but that is all we have been doing in the beginning lessons. All we have done is learn the basics of bidding to start the game. They didn’t really tell us how to play once the bidding was done, whether we won it or not. If it sounds like I wasn’t too thrilled with learning how to play bridge that is about right. At 9 this morning we had our final bridge lesson and still didn’t deal any cards. Didn’t seem fun to me, but I had to do something in the morning. After bridge I went to the Showroom where there was a peek behind the scenes of the stage. All the singers and dancers of the shows came up front and introduced themselves and answered questions about how they got their jobs and their experiences.  We then walked being the stage and saw the dressing rooms and stuff. Robin was there and we made a time to meet and review the dance. There is one part I really have problems with and we got together and practiced for about 20 minutes. I am not sure I want to do this, but it should be fun and something to write about tomorrow J. After eating with my mom I went to the trivia contest. We usually play as a team, but since none of the rest of the group that is with me on the cruise was  in the room I joined another group. A couple of the questions were name 10 countries with only 4 letters. I got Chad, Iraq, Iran, Peru, Togo, Cuba, but nothing else. How long was Robinson Carusoe on the island for and what was the name of the island, I didn’t know … 28 years and the Island of Despair. There were 15 questions in all and we didn’t do very well. I wanted to watch the good players play bridge so I went down to watch. When I walked into the room it was packed. I didn’t see my mom and the leader of the bridge group was there so I asked her. She was happy to see me and asked if I wanted to play. I told her I didn’t really know how, I hardly knew how to bid. The teacher of the beginning class was right at the door and the leader asked her if I was ready and the teacher said she thought I was. WHAT!! I have never played a hand of bridge in my life! I sat down and the leader of the group was my partner. I bid, sort of, and did my best. We won more hands than we lost. After every 2 hands we changed opponents and I introduced myself and apologized for not knowing what I was doing. The leader helped me a lot and made me feel very comfortable. I had a lot of fun and we played for about 2 hours. At the end the leader of the group introduced me and told everyone it was my first  time playing and she thought I did a terrific job. My mom told me the leader went to her twice while we were playing to tell her how good she thought I was doing. I felt good. After the game I went to the deck where you can walk all the way around the ship, 4 times for a mile, and walked a 5K race. I was supposed to walk at 3, but the bridge didn’t finish until 4pm so I walked by myself, 14 laps around the ship in case I miscounted. It took me 55 minutes, but I wanted to walk the whole distance because the “cause” we were talking for was cancer and my dad died from it and my sister just defeated it last year. After the hour of walking I went back to my room to rest for a while. While I was there the leader of the bridge group called me to tell me I had done excellent. I had gotten a MASTERS POINT which most people don’t do until they have been playing for a while. My mom said the points are given to the top 4 finishers so that means my partner and I were in the top 4 of the day! WOW, I was happy!! Tonight we dressed up for dinner and went to a fancy restaurant again, and again it took hours to eat because the service was too slow. We took some professional pictures after eating since we were all dressed up. Then I went down to my room since tomorrow was an early and exciting day.