7 am morning wake up call, then the loud speaker in our room goes off….first some music and then Chris our River Boat Guide tells us to make our way to Deck 2 for breakfast….On this cruise if you snooze you lose.  We did not sleep well last night, the beds are like slate, hard and bumpy, the boat rocked from side to side…but still we get up we don’t want to miss the only food on this boat we can eat.

We start our morning by going to see some demonstrations.   First one was Chinese Painting.  We spend an hour learning about the heritage of the painter.  He did not speak English so Chris our River guide did the interpretation.  We learned the ancient way of creating the ink and then we saw the two types of paintings, I can’t spell the Chinese names but one is very detailed the other not.  At one point we got up to look at all the paintings, today I think I have adapted and now speak Chinese English.  I was trying to tell Sharon something and the words kept coming out without the endings….we broke into laughter and couldn’t stop….it was a very funny moment.

When this was over we moved to the Pearl demonstration.  Here we learned how to tell what is a real pearl and what isn’t.  We learned about cultured pearls, the colors and so on.  It was a very informative session.

We docked at Shengnongixi and we are supposed to take a small boat to explore the “Lesser of the Three Gorges”.  But first we are called to the upper deck of our battle ship to view the scenery as we pass thru the Gorge….we are on a yucky brown river, in the middle of these gigantic mountains.  The scenery is breath taking; we are able to see caves and interesting shapes of the first Gorge.  Picture taking in not great because of the haze but we did our best.  It is very windy and after a while we move to the Sunday room deck where you can still watch from the outside.  We spend a leisurely morning and then are called to deck 2 for lunch.  Not a good lunch for us, I think we primarily ate rice and watermelon…The food on the ship is not agreeing with us.  After lunch the group meets to disembark and go on the smaller boats.

I was not feeling good and decided to stay back.  I retired to my room, slept a bit then worked on a 2.5 inch teddy bear.  While in my room, Anna, our housekeeper came in.  Anna is 18 and is working to help feed her family and save money for school.  She would like a better life.  Anna was very intrigued with the bear and stayed awhile.  After that she came by to see if I need the doctor.  I ended up giving her another kit for a bear that I had with me and she was very grateful.

Around 5:30 Sharon and the group were back to the boat, they took a Ferry for a bit and then ended up on little boats with 5 men doing a kind of standing up rowing.  They saw some interesting animals like Monkeys etc…They all had their life jackets on and were quite impressed with the vegetation they saw. 

Now it’s off to dinner….guess what….the food was not so good again.  WE dined on rice, watermelon and maybe some cucumber.  There were a few of us on this diet and we decided to go to the Sunday room for a Banana Ship.  Have you ever heard of these?  Well as you know English is not the main language here in China and the interpretations of things sometimes feels funny to us.   None-the-less we all decided to get Banana ships – however I wanted mine without the Banana…Have you guessed yet….You probably got it right, they are actually Banana boats at home.  Three scoops of ice cream with sauce and bananas on the side.  Sharon and Darlene’s arrived as expected, my banana ship sans banana arrived and they decided I still needed fruit so they lined mine with apple…it worked.

Tonight there was a talent show, so after our Banana ship we all decided to go up and watch.  You have to know that there are no more than 100 passengers on this grand battleship, half the people are from our group, a small group from Germany and then some Chinese.  We go upstairs and the grand ballroom (as they call it) has chairs around a small dance floor which has a disco ball and colorful lights above it.  Color our other River guide introduces some Chinese dancers – they are the wait staff at lunch and dinner.  After several danced we have one entrant – Sarah from our group is going to juggle.  Sarah hadn’t juggled in several years; she was given 3 apples and made us all laugh hysterically.  Color then called a Canadian guy and a Chinese guy to the stage to play a game.  Basically they tied a box around their waists and made them jiggle to get ping pong balls out of the box and into a box on the floor.  It was supposed to mimic a hen laying eggs.  It was hysterical…The talent show was over and it was time to go to bed.  Well we thought we were going to sleep.

Sharon turned her light off at 10 pm; I could not sleep now so I decided to read.  Around 10:45 our loudspeaker when off and Chris decided to tell us we were entering the locks.  That sounds okay right except she spent the next hour and a half explaining step by step.  I was getting annoyed so I jumped up to look out the window and we were inches away from a cement wall.  I decided it was best to close the curtain and ignore what I saw.  Now wait, I should be able to sleep right but remember we have these little tiny beds, every time you roll over you fall on the floor….THUD….a common sound on this boat.  Around 3:30 or 4:00 Sharon’s CPAP machine decided it wanted to make noise, this went on for about 1.5 hours too….it was a sleepless night….

A cave in one mountain in the first of the Three Gorges