I'm back!!

December 1, 2013: Ft. Lauderdale, back to the ship!
This morning was a bit hectic. I had a difficult time getting to sleep last night, and then kept waking up at random times throughout the night, I think once was because the phone rang… once. HAL recently (as in the past month) came up with a new system of giving out flight and hotel information, however not everything is always included in that one little part of a document containing flights and the name of the hotel, like information about the shuttle from the airport to the hotel, AND information about the shuttle from hotel to ship. I asked the hotel when I arrived, but they didn’t know exactly what time the shuttle should be there, they said it usually comes around 8, so that’s what I planned for, really 7:45 just to be safe. So, I went to breakfast and around 7:20 I finished and started to head upstairs when I saw a shuttle pull in, and a nurse I know from one of the ships waiting in the lobby. She’d seen the shuttle too, and told me to hurry but that she’d tell them to wait on me. Made it to the ship just fine, but when we got to the terminal, apparently more has changed, we have to give up our passports and our medical passports before we even can get on the ship, so there were maybe 25 of us (a lot were apparently flown into Miami, so had different shuttles) in the small room with the x-ray machine, trying to fill out forms and form some sort of line to turn them in, get confirmed and get our stuff out of everyone else’s way. Crazy. So, I get on the ship, and to my room, next to my first room last contract, to find it full of stuff, hardly any room for my luggage, but I find space.

Not sure what to do for the next 2 hours until my meeting, I pull a blanket onto one of the beds to sit and read. The two girls come and go, one had to literally throw all her stuff in a suitcase because they were making frustrated calls over the PA system for all disembarking crew to go to the crew mess, and her stuff was everywhere. Finally, my meeting time came around, so I went to that. As I was coming back to the room from that, I met up with Emily, the YPC, she gave me a schedule and we talked for a bit before I ran off to change and get some lunch before Open House. My new roommate arrived just as I was leaving for lunch, so we talked for a minute and I ran off to get food. Only once I was there did I realize that I wasn’t really that hungry. I ate anyway and went upstairs to organize stuff for Open House. For the first hour, no one showed up, not even wandering by, so I sat there watching Finding Nemo. Natalie, my roommate and fellow Club HAL girl, came up and we talked for a while, then it got really busy, then really quiet, then really busy. It continued like that the rest of the afternoon, 4 families would come at once, and then no one would be there for 30 minutes.

After that hectic Open House (we have some interesting families onboard, lots of really little ones. As in half the kids onboard are 3 or 4), I returned to the room to unpack some and ended up talking with Natalie until she went to do wristbands, then we talked again as she unpacked before her meeting and before I had to go to the Sailaway Party (in the rain, luckily when we got there we were told we only had to stay for a little bit). Emily, Amanda (the librarian) and I then went up to the OB for a bit, where one of the cadets had invited us to eat pizza and watch Despicable Me with a group of random people. They ended up not starting the movie until after we had to leave for our Entertainment Department meeting, but we did socialize there for a bit.

The Dept meeting was short, so we had a nice long dinner before Natalie and I went to work. I was so glad we combined the groups tonight, because it was just insane. 2 of the tweens showed up, and most of the young ones. We could tell that they all were exhausted and should’ve been in bed. Two of the most tired little ones literally attached themselves to me, so I tried to keep them entertained playing games, but one of them just wasn’t having it. Then, another of the girls just refused to listen to anything Emily, Natalie, or I said to her. Then one of the boys started to go play xbox instead of the activity we were playing. It was all just crazy. One of the little boys who attached himself to my leg a few times ended up falling asleep on the couch. We had to talk to a lot of parents, some of them just didn’t want to be there, others we found out weren’t fully potty-trained, some were just too tired to be there, and some wouldn’t follow the rules. I really hope tomorrow is better, I don’t know if Emily is going to let us stay combined or not, maybe the little ones will be better in the smaller room, where there’s less to get into and make a mess. I don’t know.

I hadn’t slept well last night, and Natalie was on her third ship this contract (she was transferred from the Ryndam to the Eurodam to here in the last month) so she was exhausted. We clocked our hours (another new thing, but this is very good, we don’t have to wait until after midnight to clock our hours! We can do it as soon as we finish work!), then headed straight to the room for bed. We ended up talking for a long time, finding out we have a lot in common so that’s good!