Maasdam reunion in Venice!

September 12, 2013: Venice embark
I had to be up fairly early for Club HAL on an embark day, but that’s because of a roundabout reason. A few cruises ago, HAL got rid of the disembarkation talk and “Love in Any Language,” which was a kind of show for the guests, featuring at least half the people from every department, it was the “crew’s farewell to the guests.” Once they got rid of that, they replaced it by having one or two people from every department stand on the gangway the whole time guests are disembarking, just to wave and say bye. That’s before 7am until after 10am, just waving and saying bye. I think it’s weird, it’s too early in the morning for those of us who have this as our one absolute morning off, and it’s unfair to the departments who have to work all embark day and yet have to sacrifice a few people to just stand and wave.

Anyway, Club HAL is now on that rotation in the entertainment department, so Ryan and I split the morning, I got to stand out there 8:30-10, then had to finish packing and move rooms. Moving rooms took a lot longer than anticipated for a few reasons. I didn’t have a key, because I’ve been working when the crew office has been open the last few days; once I got a key though, the key to my old room was deactivated and I didn’t discover that until I’d gone all the way back to the room to get a load of stuff. By the way, my room was all the way at the back of the ship, and crew office is all the way forward, not to mention that they’re supposed to be closed on the morning of embark day. Then, once I got them to fix that key, I tried the other key, which wasn’t working now, and when I finally got to my third and final trip to my old room, that key had been deactivated. So, I got my exercise this morning running from the back of the ship, to the front and back and forth again and again.

Anyway, once I got that fixed and got all my stuff into the room finally, I went by to say by to James. Cass and I had agreed to meet at my gangway at 11, so we met and since I’d moved already, we went into Venice together just to walk around and catch up. We walked a different way than I’ve walked before and we saw quite a lot of cool stuff, there’s one shop that lets you paint your own Venetian mask, they apparently made masks for a movie Nicole Kidman was in, with the mask, they give you an instruction/history book of the masks. Pretty cool; we didn’t have the time to do it, but Cass and I are both thinking of going back there when we’re next in Venice. We got pizza for lunch and then had to head back to the ship so she could be ready for their drill before all aboard time.

I had a bit of a scare involving my pillow, stuffed animals, neck pillow, and devotional (all in my pillow) being gone from my newly-made bed, but I got the HR manager to help me fix it and housekeeping gave me my stuff back (which they’d apparently thought the girl before me had left).
Then I went up to Club HAL to see how Open House was going. I met Megan, a new Club HAL girl that none of us knew was coming today. She said she was supposed to come last cruise; still odd that none of us knew, Crew Office was in a scramble this morning to find a room for her (they told me this as I came in to get my key fixed for the third time).

I got to relax in my new room the rest of the afternoon, chatting with Emily. After dinner, I did the same until Ryan called to ask if I could come up early to cover for him because he had to meet someone and do Event Manager stuff (he’s taken over for the next two weeks since our EM had to go to Seattle for some kind of training). Megan came up later and we worked the night shift together. Just one kid for 15 minutes, and we played Skip-Bo. After he left (one of the 11yearolds that was here last cruise as well), we played a few more games of Skip-Bo, then closed up at 10 and went to the Loft in case one of the three teens showed up. They didn’t, so we ended up working on my puzzle for the next hour and a half before I showed her the OB and we hung out there until we could do our hours.