It’s been a busy first few days. I don’t think that will ever change for the first few days of being on a new ship. I had to go to the normal meetings, then got a general tour of the ship from my YPC Anna. It’s very much like the Oosterdam so nothing too new there. Then, there was an hour before I had to go to another meeting, so I went back to the room where I met my roommate Betsy. She got on that day too, but is only staying on for a week. We got out of the meeting in time for us to change and head up to Club HAL. All 8 members of Club HAL worked Open House from 12-3. It was really busy, I was finding all the supplies and trying to help register people and give the kids tours of the area, all at the same time!
After Open House was over, the emergency drill started. Betsy and I went to the Entertainment Office to use our phones for a little bit before we left. The cruise director said it was okay, but first we had to go find the list of holiday ducks that had been placed around the ship for last week. Most of them ended up being in locked cabinets, and since the drill was going on there was no one around to get them for us. We ended up only getting one of twelve!
At 4:30 we had to attend the sailaway party. I was not expecting to have to do that again. It’s a very big deal here. All the orange-shirt-wearers (the Explorations Team) have to get up and dance while the band plays, trying to get other people to dance as well. Of course no one came up to dance with us, so it was just 15 or so of us there, a sea of orange. That lasted an hour, and we all went to eat a quick dinner before going to the Entertainment Meeting. It’s a MUCH bigger entertainment department than on the Maasdam, it was kind of weird seeing that many people, and not knowing many of them.
It was a busy first night in Club HAL. I’m with two others, Triston and Laura in the Tweens room. We had about 25 kids come up; the room isn’t really that big, so it started to get a little cramped. This Club HAL has an air hockey table, foosball table, one group of small tables, a couch and rug area and another small table. Some of the kids ended up playing card games or board games at the tables, but there wasn’t enough room for three games at once, so some groups ended up on the floor. I felt like I was tripping over everyone all night long.
I was really tired, so went to bed early, not long after we got off work.
Half Moon Cay day was fun! I had a meeting at 8:30, then a safety drill after. It didn’t last too terribly long, so I got to relax some before I went up for lunch. I ended up sitting with the DJ, he was on the bus with me coming in and is brand new to ships. I hadn’t really decided whether I was going ashore or not, but I decided to go with Seth (the DJ) since then I wouldn’t be alone. We met some of the other Club HAL people ashore and we all just hung out in the sun and swam until it was almost time for the last crew tender.
I came back and ended up napping until dinner. I wasn’t quite impressed with the dinner choices, but after I got some food and kind of lost my appetite for it, I found out that they had burgers in one of the lines.
It was another busy night in Club HAL, but at least we had more of a plan to follow with the theme: Eurodam Olympics. We had them break up into teams and make banners. One group came in kind of later during free time and it turns out that they speak French! They’re very easy-going kids, so it was easy giving them the instructions for the activities. We did some sports activities outside, then came back about 30 minutes before closing and did some other activities in the room.
Once all the kids left, Anna asked us to help deliver the daily programs to the rooms, so we divided up and each took a floor or two, then helped sort the others and deliver them as well (even and odd room numbers). After that, we had to go to the stage and help blow up balloons for the New Years balloon drop. That didn’t take as long as I thought it would, because the entire entertainment department was there to help. Finally we got to go change and head to the OB to hang out.
This morning, I went up for breakfast to discover that all the tweens and kids youth staff were there! It was nice having people to eat breakfast with for a change. We went up to Club HAL for the morning activities. Some of the kids were already up there waiting for us when we got there 10 minutes early! We played games, did some crafts, played air hockey and played more games until our lunch break. We stayed in the Lido our whole break, just chatting. After lunch, the kids were waiting for us again. We did a craft, but then started our card games early since there were quite a few that didn’t want to draw. We ended up playing Spoons for an hour. The kids loved it, most of them hadn’t played it before so we had to teach them, but they caught on very quickly.
There was a bit of craziness during ice cream time since the Lido was packed when we were supposed to go down, so we put it off for a while, but then the ice cream line was long when we did go down, so we had to wait a while before we could get all 30 of the kids ice cream. After that, we attempted to go up to the Sports Deck, but there were a lot of people there as well. We’d missed our slot because of the Lido issues so we just took the kids back inside and played some group games until it was time to go.
Jan 1, 2013
Last night’s theme was Lights Camera Action. I’d only done that theme for an hour before the family dance on the Oosterdam so it was interesting having three hours to fill with it. But, it was also New Years Eve so we kind of combined the two to make one theme night. We had a big “farewell to 2012” banner that we filled with major events from the year, then we had them each make stars for their celebrity persona indicating what they were famous for, and we attached them to the beads we’d given them for New Years. We played Celebrity Heads for a while, but the ‘audience’ of kids kept giving away the answers before the person had a chance to guess so we gave up on that, and had a dance competition on Just Dance. One of the other Club HAL girls came in and took over at 10 for the six kids who had signed up to stay for after-hours and the rest of us went to change into formalwear before heading up to the festivities! There were parties in every room on the first two floors. Laura, Triston, Peter and I (half of Club HAL) ended up going to the Queens Lounge and hanging out there listening to one of the HAL Cats bands play (on Vista and Signature Class ships there are two HAL Cats and no Neptunes).
About thirty minutes before midnight, Laura and I went up to the Crow’s Nest to help Betsy with the teens since the other guy helping her was in the midnight festivities as Father Time and had to leave and get ready. We got there and we all went down to the Mainstage (known on other ships as the Vista Lounge, or the Showroom). There were TONS of people there, the first two levels hardly had space to move around, but Laura and I kind of blended in with the teens and danced. We went up to the balcony 10 minutes before midnight, found Triston and Peter, and found less people up there so we ended up with a really great view of the stage and crowd below. The balloon drop went off well and then it was the new year. We listened to a few more songs of the HAL Cats, then went down to the crew party. There were an interesting mix of people there, some of us were still dressed formal while others were in shorts or jeans.
This morning, I was about to get up to get ready and go ashore, but about the time I was getting out of bed, they made an announcement saying that crew weren’t allowed shore leave today. So, I went back to bed for a while, then got up and read until lunch. I stayed at lunch with the rest of Club HAL until 2, when we opened. It was a very non-hands-on day for us. We had a Just Dance competition again (this time it was on the schedule), then one of the dancers from the cast came in and gave a dance lesson. After that, it was closing time. Triston, Laura and I (the three of us are with the tweens) went down to the Lido for a bit and got a snack before heading back down to our rooms.
I just bought an internet card since it seems like it might be worth it, the internet on this ship apparently works well!
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