House Boating

So, I have a confession to make. I know some of you reading this will
think it's vile, so you may want to shield your minds, but I've never
been to lake Powell and I've never been on a houseboat. Before now.

It's kinda funny, becuase everyone seems to be on the same itinerary.
We ran into two fellows from Oman the other day (who shouted "What,
one man and three women?" when they saw us) who were on the same track
as us for a day or so--we'd run into them at the waterfall, then at
the tea plantation, then at the scenic overlook. All over.

Even funnier is a newlywed couple we met by a dam a few days ago.
They're here for 5 days on their honeymoon. We took some pictures for
them at the dam, then ran into them paddleboating later that day. The
next day we saw them at the wildlife preserve, and again at the
cultural dance (which was more of a cultural eye-show--they had really
expressive eyes. They were as big as saucers and showed emotion so
clearly. Emotion is universal.

So, our married friends told us they would be on a houseboat at the
same time as us--we haven't seen them, but we're glad of that. We have
a houseboat all to ourselves, along with three wait staff.

We thought we'd be floating downstream to Covlon, the next stop on our
itinerary, but it turns out we're just going in circles for the day
then coming back to the same place we got dropped off then driving
down, though there would have been plenty of time to float down (we're
on the boat for about 20 hours). Right now we're docked in some small
town next to a half a dozen other houseboats, waiting for breakfast
and watching a creepy movie called "My name is Khan" about an autistic
man who moves from India to america. It would be a great movie except
for the fact that we bought it for $1.20 and the sountrack and
background noises work fine but the voices don't come through at all,
so we have to read subtitles and listen to music and clapping and
footsteps and waves... really, everything but the voices.