last day and first day

March 17, 2013: Sea day, last day
This morning was rather quiet, only three of the boys came up and we ended up playing cards. I taught them Speed, Spit and Rummy. One of them caught on really quickly to the first two but kept doing very badly in Rummy. After a long lunch with Sarah, Jessica, Ana and a few others, I went back up to see if anyone was there since we had decided that we were going to the shows (Island Magic-the steel band-was on before Dancing with the Stars this afternoon).
After both the shows, we went to the Lido for a quick snack, then back up to the Loft just to hang out. After a few left to go find music, the ones of us that were left played Battle of the Sexes. Surprisingly (they’re the younger group that stayed) they could answer a lot more questions than I’d expect, especially since they knew questions that the teens last week had no idea about.

It’s been an exhausting cruise, so I was kind of glad when tonight came around so I could wrap it up. We didn’t really do much tonight, just some games, chatting, card games, exchanging of emails, etc. The usual last-night stuff. Immediately after work, I changed quickly and went to the OB to hang out with Jessie and everyone else since it was the last night of the cruise AND St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

March 18, 2013: Fort Lauderdale
We had a meeting with morning at 9 with Dan Struck, the person who interviews a lot of the entertainment department and has to give permission to hire the rest. There wasn’t really anything that I specifically needed to hear, so I was kind of bored. I honestly don’t think most of what he talked about had anything to do with me. He talked about why he may not respond to emails, new titles that may be coming for some people, the new alcohol policy, etc. At least it was a quickish meeting. Chrissy found out that immigration was going to take a while, so we went up to breakfast together. When she left to wait for that, I went up to the bow with my phone.

It was another quiet embark day lunch, I hope I don’t get too used to this in case it changes! Open House went pretty slowly, I organized the programs for Chrissy, texted Mom, and had 5 kids come to get registered. I realized at the last minute that Chrissy asked me to do wristbands during the drill (I haven’t had to do that in quite a few weeks). It didn’t seem like many kids were there, but I walked around a few times and talked to some families that didn’t know about Club HAL. I was exhausted with a slight headache left over from this morning, so I went back to the room to take a nap before dinner. I actually managed to sleep, but it didn’t help the headache.

Dinner didn’t completely cure the headache either, the salt in the pasta and sugar in the apple crumbled helped some, but I went up to Club HAL to help Chrissy for a bit and still my head was hurting. I helped Chrissy for an hour since she had to do stuff with the crew office and I didn’t have much else to do.

At 9 I went to the Loft, two girls came to look around, but they didn’t stay for long. Another couple of teens came up, and I had five up there total: 4 from Canada, one from TN, and two sets of siblings. They didn’t really care enough to do anything else, so we drew/colored and got to know everyone. At 12, I had to kick them out so I could quickly clean up and get to bed. Thankfully it didn’t take long!