Destination Expert - What Is My Next Step

I get the question all the time.  "What about your destination expert lecturing on cruise ship?'

I usually answer the same way "I don't know".

After a great year last year on Princess in South America.  I was really excited to have four contracts to present my port lectures.  Three with Celebrity and one with Princess.

Of course all of these have been cancelled due to Covid.  

For now I am waiting - along with all of you.

For those of you who know me, you know I am an emotional person.  I take things to heart.  You can usually read me just by looking at my face.  At first when all this Covid went down I was like.  Forget it!  I am not lecturing anymore!  I was hurt, angry, sad, frustrated.  But now I have settled down and realize those emotion are okay.  I miss cruising, I miss people, I miss sharing my information, I miss helping others.  

So I am anxious to get back into lecturing when cruising starts back up.  Heck I am anxious just to get back on a ship!

I am a firm believer in going after what you want in life and also let destiny have it's path too.

So I am enjoying life.  I am enjoying the moment.  But I do have to say that in the past few weeks I have been wanting to start writing some lectures.   I am going to expand my lecture series to include more than just ports.

Since I really love Canadian history and I live in the Maritimes I am going to focus on that.  I am going to write some lectures about life in the Maritimes, the history, the people.

These lectures are meant for Canada/New England Cruises, especially those that leave from Quebec City.

How many of you know about the Halifax Explosion?  Pier 21 the gateway to Canadian Immigration?  Coal Mining a Hard Life?  Expulsion of the Acadians?  Africaville?  Port Royal the first British Settlement in Canada?  

These are just some of the titles I am working on with rough outlines.  I don't really plan on doing too much until the Fall when the weather starts to turn, but I thought you might be interested.

What a Crazy Time

- Covid 19 really threw everyone for a loop.  If you would of told me in January that the cruise industry would be put into pause for as long as it looks like it will, I would of thought you were nuts.  I actually thought people were over reacting initially.  Of course by mid March I knew that this pandemic is much much bigger than I ever could of imagined.

- I have been rather lazy.  Considering all the time I had since getting home March 18, and all the times I felt SOOOO BORED!  I was just lazy.  And Netflix drew me in.

- I have been sad.  Yup even I get sad.  I wanted some form of normalcy.  And even though life seems to be "sort" of normal in our part of the world, there are still tons of limitations.  

- I mourned cruising, travelling, talking about travel.  Since no one is really aware of when things will get back to "normal" and we can all start really planning cruises.  I know many of you are booking and planning for the future.  I commend you, I am just not able to go there.  I want to be sure that my flight is going to happen, that my cruise is going to happen, that I won't be out money.  We sought out friends from our travel circle and even went to visit (and they came to us) with Monika and Neil who live about 3 hours away to get our travel fix on.

- I have really been enjoying being at home and spending time with Bernie. We got back into doing puzzles.  We have been cooking great meals, doing projects around the house.  We stained our back deck, we painted our front deck, we built garden beds, and I put in a large garden.  We still have a few things to do.  Then I need to start canning and putting up everything that the garden is producing.

Things in our province are looking good.  We have not had a single case for almost two weeks, and have really only had a handful of cases in the past six weeks.  We are being taken care of by our leaders and for the most part people are following the guidelines.  

We head to the beach often - we live on an huge island.  This picture is from yesterday when we actually went to the Bras D'Or lakes.  

For the past week my mind has been pondering things and I thought these thoughts are things I wanted to write about in a blog post.  So tonight is the reason I am writing.  I wanted to touch base and reconnect and let you know.  Stay tuned, I will start writing again.

What about?  Well we will see.  But we are planing some stay cation trips around Nova Scotia.  And since our province, along with New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland have opened up as a 4 Province bubble, we may venture out of the Province too.  So I will write about these trips.

I may write a bit about some of my favorite places.  Some of the ways I research.  Oh who knows what I will write about.  But I hope you will be interested.

I hope all of you are staying safe and are being kind to one another.  All we have is each and no matter our differences we need to take care of each other no matter who they are.