If you only see the outline below, we haven’t yet gotten to update it with what actually happened. Be sure to check back later!

Since all of our friends back in Indiana are probably enjoying a reflective, quiet worshipful Sunday, we decided to have a similar day today in the middle of the Barentz Sea. There was no night last night again, but I think we are back to where the sun will set from now on. It is kind of disconcerting when you stir in the middle of the night, and there is light streaming in the crack between the curtain and the wall!

We had our usual breakfast in the World Cafe, and seeing that our room was being worked on, we found some seats near the pool area and caught up on sleep and/or news before heading back to the room. We noticed a little rain when we were at breakfast; not much, but enough to keep us from doing walking on the outside decks.

We are more up-to-date on our blog than we’ve been for a while, and today gave us a chance to polish most of the past off. We have some pretty full days coming up, so the outlines and a few details might have to work until we get back to Lafayette.

We did get a good chance to think about what we’ve seen in the northernmost inhabited place in the world…and the guides there certainly reminded us of that quite often!

We elected to have lunch at to Pool Grill today. There are a lot fewer choices there (read temptations), and since this was not going to be a very active day, that seemed best.

While most of what we are seeing is once again water, it was a welcome sight in the middle of the day to see Bear Island. We weren’t especially close to it, but it was reassuring that we aren’t hopelessly away from land.

We watched a couple more of the enrichment lectures and some brief videos from Viking about Norway and the food and culture here.

At 6, we went to church. Viking provided a venue and a four-page document that included some responsive readings and prayers, but we were on our own to get someone to lead. One of the passengers was a chaplain in the medical world, and he stepped forward. There were about 15-20 passengers there, and after the brief service, several of us chatted about who we were and our experiences with God during the trip. While the service was pretty scripted and it seemed like there was some attempt to keep God at arms length, it was also good to afterwards see that God has relationships with each of us as individuals, and is both creator of all and approachable.

Since this day was largely about watching lectures and eating, We had a nice dinner in the dining room. Here’s the menu from that night, which gives you an idea of the things we were eating on a regular basis.

Alan was brave and chose the venison dish, while Joyce went for squid. After dinner we asked for our special chai tea again, and when the request worked its way up through the waitstaff chain, we got “Oh, you’re the ones!”. It turns out that a special stash was locked away just for us. Viking continues to make us feel special!

The show tonight was titled something “Southern”, but it was really a collection of stories that tell a story. It was kind of fun to see a bunch of Brits interpret them, but they did an ok job.

We retired to more Downton, and getting ready for actually hitting the Norwegian coast tomorrow morning.