sea day and Panama

March 13, 2013: Sea Day
It was a quiet morning, only one girl came in 15 minutes after I did and we just talked for another thirty minutes when a few others started to show up. We played Super Mario Bros until it was time for lunch.
This afternoon, the teens all decided that they wanted to attend the dance class. I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet about the new thing HAL is doing called “Dancing with the Stars at sea.” (I call it dancing with the cruisers). Last cruise was the first week of that for us. It went as well as it could considering the information the dancers and techies were given. Sarah, the stage manager/events technical manager, told Charlotte and me a lot about it. They have three dance classes the first few days of the cruise and choose 4 couples to be “finalists” in that type of dance, they dance with one of the cast members and then it goes down to two (they try for one male, one female). The last day of the cruise, there’s a big production where the six guests perform with the dancers and the crowd pretty much decide who wins. This will happen during EVERY cruise. Then, next January or so, all the winners from all the ships apparently will get a free cruise for two and compete to see who is the ultimate winner.

Interesting, no? I wonder what they’ll do after they’ve exhausted their pool of participants (a lot of people who cruise on HAL repeat cruises, and not a whole lot want to actually participate in the competition)?
Anyway, we went as a group to the class and they learned a cha-cha routine. I had it memorized after 5 minutes, haha. It was pretty fun. They’re not allowed to be in the final four though, since they’re not 18, but it seems like they enjoyed it! After the class, most of them went to the pool together. Only one girl came up with me to the Loft, where we watched Mean Girls all afternoon.

I hung out in the library with Charlotte for a while after dinner, then took over for Jacob for a little bit before going early to the Loft where the teens were waiting on me. We played Super Mario Bros for a while, then watched Indiana Jones. We timed that perfectly because it was exactly 12 when the movie ended!

March 14, 2013: Panama
There was horrible noise as we went through the locks this morning. I think it was kind of windy so we kept bumping against the sides. I had breakfast then went up to the Loft to wait for the four kids who didn’t go on excursions. One was there right away; he had borrowed “Batman Begins” from the front office for us to watch. The others slowly trickled in and joined us in watching the movie. I stayed a bit later to finish it, then went down for lunch.

There weren’t many people at lunch, but I managed to stay until nearly time to go back up to the Loft. I was up there early and the one teen and I just played Super Mario Bros until I went to take over for Jacob so he could print programs. Since the one teen that had been there was a crew-kid, Jacob said I could leave at 4 if no one else came. I went back to the Loft to find an empty room. About 3:45 though, more of the teens got there. We had arrived to Colon early (by over an hour) and most of the tours that had left in the morning were back. So, I had to stay working until the usual 5. I couldn’t get off then because all aboard is 5:30. We didn’t leave until at least 6:30 though, apparently one of the tours got back really late so we had to wait on them. I had dinner with Sarah and Charlotte and talked about what’s going on the theatre. Sarah was supposed to have a replacement come on for this cruise, but they backed out 2 days before leaving. Now, they’re asking Sarah to stay on an extra cruise to train the new person coming on now that they finally found a replacement. It all seems pretty crazy, why can’t they have a plan for when things like this happen, at least have a back-up person to call so people can actually leave on their assigned date.

I went to the Loft early since there really was nothing better to do. One of the girls and I talked, then we all went to the show (a comedian) together. It was entertaining since half of the teens were down in the front row, so he picked on them a bit during the show. After the show, we just went back to the Loft and hung out until time to leave.