Crossing the International Dateline....and Equator

Again, I'm so confused. Remember how when we flew to Australia we lost a day due to crossing the International Dateline? I never did quite wrap my mind around it, but would either ask Bruce what day it was or my phone did a pretty good job of not only telling me what time and day it was where I was located, but also what time and day it was at home. We were always about a day ahead of you all. However, we're going in the opposite direction and I can't just go to sleep on an airplane and wake up to a new day........two days later. I'm on a ship. So how in the world does this work?!

Today is May 2nd. Yesterday was May 1st. AND the day before that was May 1st. Say what?! Really. We had a sort of Groundhog Day and had two May 1st. The one person I can think of that was probably really happy about that is the guy who changes the day sign in the elevator floor every night (if you've cruised, you know what I'm talking about!). He got the day off! OK, I get that. However, when we crossed the Date Line, my phone kind of went berserk. I have restarted it three times thinking it will reset itself, but it has been showing opposite AM and PM. I'm writing this in the afternoon, but it says it's 1:00 AM. Way to let me down phone! I was counting on you! Maybe it will come to its senses in Hawaii.

To make it even more confusing, every couple of days we move ahead an hour on the ship. Today, we had a game at 11, at noon we moved forward an hour and then a ceremony at 1:15. That meant that at noon when we came out of our game, it was 1:00 and we had 15 minutes to get to the ceremony. The issue was when to eat. Bruce says, "Maybe we just skip lunch today." "What?!!!!" I squeak out. Yea, that didn't happen......

The ceremony. We just crossed the equator! I didn't realize it was a big deal, but apparently we will all get certificates saying that we survived it, er, crossed it, er, oh, whatever. You can see how many people came out to the pool to witness this ceremony.

This is when they lost me. There was a queen and a King Neptune. They brought forth people who had done "bad stuff" (mostly jokey), who needed to be cleansed in order to be allowed to cross the equator. As far as I could tell, they just made a big big mess

by throwing spaghetti sauce and gravy all over them. And that is cleansing someone? Hmmmmmmmmm

Then they made people kiss this big fish

And now that all that nonsense has been completed, we can all cross the equator and get the t-shirt, I mean, get the certificate to prove it!