Drills

Saturday August 25, 2012
Embarking day from Montreal! I helped with open house for two hours and there were a few families who came in, but not too many. After wristbands, Alyssa and I walked around during sailaway. Apparently that is an important thing for the cruise director here. Not many of the guests ahd questions for us, so we left as soon as we could. I went down to deck six to walk around and watch us take off. It was pretty cool, even though we created a traffic jam for the other tiny boats around us. Next time, I’m taking my camera because Montreal is a beautiful city. I talked to quite a few passengers while out there too. They are a friendlier bunch this week. I met a woman from Montreal originally who now lives in Arizona, she used to work in the building across from the port and would watch them leave from her window! That was pretty cool to hear about. I got to my room in just enough time to get ready for dinner. Edison and I went because Alyssa was still getting ready about 15 minutes after the normal time.

After dinner, I had plenty of time to go back to the room to relax and give my teeth a good brushing before heading up to Club HAL to retrieve the supplies for the teen activities. Because this is the only Holland America ship without a Loft, we have to move rooms constantly. We were in the Crow’s Nest playing cards for an hour, before moving to the Half-Moon Room for an hour of apples to apples or cards. We ended up playing blackjack with apples-to-apples cards as chips. Finally at 10 we got to go up to Club HAL and play all the stuff up there. On this ship, the person on teens only has to work until 12, it’s nice to have some time out after work. I went to bed not long after I got off though.

August 26, 2012
Busy day today. I was intending to get off the ship kind of early to go walk around for a while before work at 12. However, I overslept. Actually, it’s a good thing I overslept because we had an “unexpected” fire drill. It was unexpected for me because Jacob hadn’t updated the schedule from yesterday. Apparently they changed the fire drill from Tuesday morning to today, and only a few people knew about it. I had just gotten out of the shower when it went off, and the front office actually called my room to see if I was coming. I was very out-of-breath with wet hair when I got there. At least now I know.

So, by the time I got back to the room, it was about 10:15, too late to go get breakfast like I had been planning on since breakfast closes at 10:30 (usually they close up early though). So, I ended up deciding not to get off, freaked out that I might miss something important like I about did (the fire drill; I planned on getting off around 9!) By the time I got my hair dried normally, it was kind of too late to get off the ship. So I just hung out in my room until I could go to lunch before work. Alyssa put up the sign and came with me since she hadn’t had kids all morning.
Around 1, 5 kids came in and stayed until 4. We played Lego Harry Potter, Lego Star Wars, Just Dance, Jenga, foosball, and one kid read when he didn’t want to play anything. It was a pretty relaxed afternoon for me. They were very happy to be here, much improvement since last week.

After I locked up after work- did I tell you already that I have my own set of keys now!? Each of us has one now and I’ll keep mine until I leave because there won’t be more than 3 of us at a time during my contract. Anyway, after I locked up, I was heading back to the room when I saw Edison in line for food at the Lido Grill, so we started talking and I sat with him while he ate his “lunch” until he had to go to work. Then, I went up and out. I walked around outside and talked some to guests as we passed each other. I ran to my room to get my camera then walked around some more. It was almost dinnertime, so I went back to the room to wait for Alyssa to call, she called not long after and said it’d be 20 minutes, so I went back up to deck 6 (you can walk all around the ship on that level, it’s where the lifeboats/rafts are- 1 lap is ¼ mile) and took pictures.

I went to dinner with Alyssa, then Edison came at 7 when he got off work and Alyssa left for work. Edison and I sat and talked until he had to go back to work at 8. Jacob had only made the schedule from 9-12 so the hours wouldn’t be as long; but the rest of the week will just be 8-12. I went up to Club HAL at 8:30 to gather stuff again and interact with the little ones a bit. We played card games and ‘stop the boat’ in the Hudson room. It was interesting adding people into card games as they came in. We attempted to play speed with 5 people!

More hanging out in Club HAL followed, they really like foosball and Just Dance, we played cards but other than that, everything in the room was left alone.

August 27, 2012
Sea Day! I worked a lot today. At 10, I had breakfast in the Lido; the teens were supposed to meet me there but none of them were quite awake at that point. One came for scattegories in the Lido, but we ended up switching to cards because Scattergories is not all that fun with just two people. We met up with another teen when we went to the Sports Deck for basketball. I actually managed to make a few baskets! The sun was in a great spot, if I ‘looked’ at the sun when I shot, I was much more likely to make the basket. More of them showed up when we went to Club HAL for game time. I had to kick them out at 12; lunch wasn’t really open yet, so I went to my room and watched the news for about 30 minutes before going back to the Lido.

At 2, I sent the teens on a scavenger hunt. I found a fun one for them. They had to find various objects around the ship (mostly clothing materials) and one had to wear it for them to get the points. We all laughed when we saw the odd combination of stuff they had on. We went out for basketball, but it was really windy and not everyone wanted to play, so we moved to the tennis court on the other side. That was interesting. The wind would mess us up when we tried to hit the ball. It was kind of exciting though. At one point, the ball went through the net at the top, and rolled around up there, getting close to the edge, then rolling away; then it bounced over each section towards the back where it could fall off. I thought it had rolled off into the water, but it had bounced off the railing to safety! Exciting 2 minutes of my day, haha.

We hung out in Club HAL for the rest of the afternoon, playing lots of xbox and card games. The one girl that was there (and a big fan of Harry Potter) and I played “Scene It?” on the xbox, which wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. I went straight down from Club HAL to dinner at 6, and ended up staying there until around 7:30. There’s a new vocalist for the HAL Cats named Kaylie and we talked all through dinner. She’s nice, another one of us younger staff (I think most of the staff here are in their 30s or so); it’s her first contract so I got to help encourage her a lot on getting through the first week.

No one came for the first hour of the Loft. Mainly because Jacob accidently put 9 o’clock twice on the schedule of events instead of having the first one be 8. I studied Italian and talked to the people who came by. At 9, they all showed up to play games. We played UNO for an hour instead of starting Monopoly (scheduled at 8), and instead of heading to play ping pong at 9:30. We almost continued in Club HAL, but the boys discovered Xbox Kinect “Wipeout” and the girls and I worked through and I Spy book! We went down to late snack in the Lido and they all got hot chocolate. We were kind of loud, but they’re teens so what else should I expect. They were glad that we all got to come as a group and hang out. We just kind of hung out for the last 30 minutes playing cards again. I kicked them out just after 12, then had to “SuperSan.” It was a much bigger deal on the other ship, super sanitizing, we had to wipe down every surface that could have been touched and contaminated. Here, it’s just wipe the tables and chairs and then you’re done.

I went back down to the Lido to hang out with Alyssa, Glenn, Edison and Kaylie since they were still there. After a few minutes, they headed up to the Crow’s Nest and I went to the room to change into my formal gear. Once I got up to the Crow’s Nest, we only had about 30 minutes to hang out, but it was still good to be able to hang out with people since I hadn’t seen anyone but the teens for most of the day. Kaylie and I are planning on going to a church together on Sunday, as long as neither of us has IPM (for Youth Staff that means working on a port day, for everyone else that means just being on the ship in case of an emergency- we have to have a certain percentage of crew on board at all times.) I get off in Bar Harbor in the afternoon, so I’m going to scope out the churches around there then! I’m very excited about this. Glenn said he might come too if he’s not working; he misses going to church as well. There is actually a mass every week on the ship, but I work when that’s going on I think, and it’s not really the same as actually going to church somewhere.

August 28, 2012
Another drill this morning. We have 4 this week because the Coast Guard is coming in Bar Harbor and they want us to be prepared. Alyssa assured me that this is not normal, having 4 in one week. At least I knew about this one! We actually had to do stuff in this one, put up signs explaining what was going on, and standing in the hall to give information (about the ‘fire’ to the guests). I got to go to breakfast at least, because we were out by 10. I met up with Brandi right before breakfast and we agreed to meet and get off together once she finished her raft drill. I didn’t quite realize that it would be so late. I work at 12, so I don’t have much time to do anything other than get the internet.