Last Sitka

July 26, 2012

Morning: It wasn’t such an early night after all. I went to the show with Megan and Julie (the comedian). They’ve been having quite a few tech problems lately: Monday was supposed to be Ballroom Blitz but something in one of the screens broke and they did a special singers-only show, last night the show was supposed to be Garage Band, but they had to do Ballroom Blitz because something went wrong in the set for Garage Band. This happened at around 6 and the show starts at 8! Lot of work for the dancers and the tech team to change at the last minute like that. After the show, there was music in the Queens Lounge, so Iris suggested I get Brian and hang out with him since he hasn’t been able to do much working with teens until late (they made a deal, she got to go to the show and he got off early). Brian and I went to the Queens Lounge to listen to the band and we chatted for a while until we decided to go hang out with other crew members. Jenn was there and we ended up talking about all sorts of stuff over wine. We talked about Jane Austen, Harry Potter, children’s books Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Apparently I am pretty well cut out for the job of librarian, and working with shore excursions! Haha, lots of options maybe if I want to keep working on ships but don’t want to do Youth Staff.

Going to Sitka today, I might not spend too much time there though because I probably should start packing a bit (I have to have my suitcases prepared for disembarkation Saturday night).

Evening: I had a great time in Sitka! I met up with Jenn, Megan and the life stylist Louise on the tender. We all went to the Highlander for a little more than an hour and got internet. I was going to stay, but they convinced me to go to lunch with them at a sushi place, I got teriyaki chicken. Yum! After that I had a good long conversation with mom before going to the post office to mail some stuff home so I might have some room in my suitcase coming back this Sunday!

There wasn’t much else to do and it was about crew curfew so I got back on the ship and napped for an hour before going to the library to study Italian. The library definitely isn’t what you’d think a library should be. It gets really loud because there’s a café and a bar next to it. I did get a lot of studying though. I like having an Italian dictionary on my kindle now, it makes my life easier because the Italian book I have doesn’t really go over vocabulary at all.

It was board game night in Club HAL. One of the tweens challenged me in Monopoly at dinner so I played Monopoly for two hours. Turns out that I’m pretty good at strategizing in this game. I got a good deal by giving someone else a monopoly on an expensive area; I didn’t have to pay rent to them and I got $500 out of it. I don’t think I’d played Monopoly since I was about 10.

Shannon and I got off work a little late because we wanted to play until the very last minute and then had to clean up afterwards. It was 10:10 when we got to the rooms and we still had to change for formal night, so we decided not to go to the show and leisurely get ready for the dessert extravaganza. We had so much fun there, I had lots of strawberries and bananas dipped in chocolate from a fountain. Mom, we need to go to the Melting Pot while I’m home. :)

Ketchikan tomorrow, then a day at sea and then it’s Victoria; hopefully we will arrive on time this week!