end of one cruise and beginning of the next

December 14, 2013
Yesterday was a rather boring sea day for me. Since I cleaned the Loft closet on the crossing, and it (surprisingly) didn’t really get messed up while I was gone, and since none of my teens have really been showing up, I had nothing really to do while in the Loft. Yes, I got to read which is nice, but when it’s for two hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon, I just don’t feel all too productive from just reading. I did have two teens come in, just for about 30 minutes each, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon, but that was it; it was a nice break from reading to set up Wipeout on the xbox for one and to play Skip-Bo with the other. Honestly, that was my whole day, I feel like I’m not doing much of anything this week, and so feeling guilty for it! I try to help out Natalie sometimes next door, but only a few of the tweens have been coming up so she doesn’t have a whole lot to do herself.

Anyway, we’d planned to have a Club HAL dinner at the Pinnacle last night, so I was given permission to leave the Loft early to change quickly into formalwear and meet the rest of them downstairs. I’m getting much better at changing in the bathrooms outside of Club HAL (for formal and for pajama nights). When I got down to the Pinnacle though, the rest of the girls weren’t there, so I asked and the manager said he didn’t know anything about our reservation, so I went to call them. Natalie didn’t pick up and I was about to call Emily when they came out of the elevator and told me that our reservations had been cancelled due to guests making reservations.


We were all still dressed up though and looking forward to a nice dinner together, so we went to Canaletto in hopes that they had an empty table for us. They did, and we got to experience their new menu. It’s been a while since I had Canaletto, actually it’s been over a year; last time I went was for Rachel’s (the librarian, now EM) birthday on the Maasdam. The new menu has “small plates,” (appetizers) “pasta” and “large plates” (entrees), they recommend group-style eating so ordering a few things and dividing them up onto everyone’s plate. So, that’s what we did. I really wasn’t that impressed. They’ve gotten rid of the bread with balsamic before the meal in favor of a small, tomato-slathered bruschetta. Splitting four ‘small plates’ wasn’t really the easiest thing actually, I tried most everything, but I really only wanted one of them and I got a very small piece of that. The pasta was good though, pesto ravioli is the better one of the two we had, the other was of course too tomato-y (rigatoni with tomato sauce and Italian sausage). I didn’t get a lot of the pasta though, because again we divided two somewhat small plates between four of us, so I really just ended up with two pieces of ravioli. They got chicken cachiattore and veal as entrees. I wouldn’t go near the veal (had it before and wasn’t in the mood to try it again), but I had one piece of chicken, not too impressive and it wasn’t quite enough, because again we were dividing it between four of us. I wish we could’ve gotten the pasta as the entrée, I would’ve been a lot happier. At least I know for certain now that going to Canaletto really isn’t worth it for me, I came away still rather hungry. Dessert was good at least, walnut praline and a scoop of ice cream! And it was nice that we all got to get dressed up and hang out as a group, we haven’t done that this contract yet.

I wasn’t really sure what to do after dinner because I had about an hour and a half before I had to be in the Loft, and half an hour before the show if I wanted to go to that alone. Instead, I just changed back into my uniform and hung out with the kids during free time and helped Natalie with her tweens before heading to the Loft. Two of my teens were actually already there when I went back to the Loft, they were very excited about Vegas night (most of the teens are), so I got out chips and tried to refresh my memory a bit as to how to play Blackjack and Texas Hold ‘em. I think I made up a few of the rules and messed up others, but we still played and they didn’t seem to care. Around 10:30, their parents came to get them, so I was left alone with nothing really to do. Snack came, brownies (I don’t normally eat the brownies on the ship, but I was hungry so I tried one, then ran downstairs to get a slice of pizza) and I ended up watching Ever After until I could clean up and leave.

I didn’t get off in Half Moon Cay today. I had the morning shift of port day and could’ve gotten off for an hour before all aboard but I decided it wasn’t really worth the stress of getting back to the tender on time. No one called for port day, but I hung out for a while in Club HAL to go through and organize the craft supplies. The afternoon was uneventful as well. The night actually went well, a lot of the teens finally showed up and they all stayed until midnight! After work I joined Natalie on the Bow where we tried to watch for shooting stars, but it was too cloudy and the moon was too bright. We tried to leave after a while (because we were tired), but Johan dragged us back inside to cheer the boys on in Wii Sports.

December 15, 2013: Fort Lauderdale
There was nothing I really needed to go shopping for today, and it’d been a late night so I slept in instead of paying for a shuttle. I had a calm morning, had lunch, called Mom from the Bow, and visited Natalie as she worked Open House. Not a whole lot of excitement; I met Ethan, who will be with us in Club HAL for a month. We had sailaway, then hung out in the Lido for 15 minutes until it was time to go to our entertainment dept meeting. After the meeting, we had about 45 minutes, not sure what else to do, and since we never get to see it, we watched as everyone rehearsed for the opening show “Listen to the Music” (which introduces everyone in the entertainment department (aside from Club HAL). That lasted about 45 minutes, perfect time to head to dinner!

It was a busy first night, at least 12 of the kids showed up, a few of them need to work on their listening skills and we had to talk to their parents about that, but most of them were tired so we mostly had counselor-lead free time the whole night. We played candyland, 4-corners, ickle bickle, where’s my shoe, and colored. Some of the kids in this group are surprisingly talented drawers! I was impressed!