airplanes and embark day

30 April 2014
Possibly two of the longest days have just passed, finally. It’s been so long, even though it’s only been two days.

Yesterday was full of airports and airplanes. I got to the airport first thing, but when I went to check-in, a message came up saying that I was too late to check-in with my bag. The lady behind the counter was not happy and informed me that they need at least 45 minutes for checked baggage. Luckily she was nice enough to get a tag and get mine on the flight. I made it through security and to my gate just as they were calling my zone to board. No breakfast in the airport for me, not like I was really hungry at 7am, but still. Anyway, 4 hour flight to phoenix, they gave us drinks, but snacks were only for purchase. I read/slept the whole flight. We landed early, I was awake for that part, from above, outside of Phoenix kind of reminded me of Greece, the mountains all rocky and empty, just surrounded by dirt and flat land instead of water. Like I said, we landed early. However, we landed so early, the flight leaving the gate we were coming in to was still there…. And then of course, they took off late, so we sat outside near our gate for 25 minutes before we could get start getting off. I was at the back of the plane, so had to wait another 10 minutes to get off myself. By that point, it was nearly boarding time for my next flight.

I pretty much ran through the airport, and made it to my gate when they were making announcements saying they would board in a few minutes. So, I quickly went back to a coffee place I’d passed, grabbed a pre-made sandwich and a drink and ran back to the gate. They were making announcements saying they had to check everyone’s documents (I guess for customs) and stamp the tickets before we boarded. I got that done, and then got in line to board. So little time. I was on the very back row on the plane, ate half the sandwich quickly while everyone else was boarding. Everyone wts on the plane when I realized that no one else was in my row (three seat row, I was in the aisle). The flight attendant asked a little bit later if I minded letting a mother and her 7-month old take those seats, so she could give the baby her own seat for a bit. I, of course, didn’t mind at all since I was absolutely shocked no one was in those seats anyway. The little girl was very cute and I helped distract her some during the flight. And I talked with the mom, who’s from Victoria BC. The flight was another long one, 3 hours, but at least I was kept occupied between talking to the mom, helping with the baby and reading my book. We finally landed and the flight attendant was surprised to see me grab the mom’s bag from the overhead bin for her while she got situated with her baby. That actually surprised me, that he was surprised. A mom carrying a baby off a plane shouldn’t have to fumble around and reach into the overhead compartments for a bag when there’s plenty of other people there to help!

Anyway, I got off the plane, went through immigration (I accidently filled out some of the form wrong since I wasn’t really sure how it worked. However, the immigration officer was really nice about it and corrected it for me, smiled and let me go on my way), and made my way to the hotel.

Then was the frustrating part. My headache was getting worse, and when I checked into the hotel, they informed me that the internet wasn’t free, but the internet in the airport was. So, after a semblance of a 30 minute nap, I went back downstairs into the airport to try to message Mom to let her know I’d made it there. No luck, the internet in the airport just wouldn’t load for me. I had some food and gave up, going back to the hotel. My head was really hurting and I wasn’t feeling so well, probably from the sandwich I had at lunch, so I slept the rest of the afternoon away off and on, waking up with my stomach and head competing to be the one that hurt the most. Mom called the hotel to talk to me and I felt a little bit better after that, and ended up falling asleep for a while finally.

When I’d checked in, they informed me that I would be sharing a room, but when no one had arrived by 9 when Mom called, I figured that something had changed. However, at 2 am, I heard banging of bags against the door as someone came in. They really should plan better for things like that. They hadn’t told her someone would be in the room, so she kind of freaked out when she saw me sit up in bed. It was a long time before either of us got to sleep, her because she had a lot to do to get herself settled (including calling the office and complaining that they hadn’t told her about me), and me of course because she was there wandering around the room doing stuff.

Morning came and again, I had to get up at 5:30 to get ready before I left. My head was still hurting really bad, but I managed to get ready and get downstairs on time. I checked out and had to wait around as they made more bags for breakfast. There I met my new YPC Danielle as she was checking out as well. We sat next to each other on the bus and talked some, but we were both pretty tired so zoned out on the ride. I got onto the ship just fine, but they didn’t really do anything for those of us that hadn’t been on R-class before, just set us free to go find our rooms and be at the meeting in an hour. Luckily Danielle helped me find the room, I briefly met my roommate (another Club HAL who’s been on for a month or so) before she went ashore for a while. The meeting was painful, my head was still pounding, but it was only an hour long. I had an hour before lunch and open house, so I went back to the room for a nap. They hadn’t put sheets on my bed yet, so I curled up under my jacket on top of the mattress and tried my best to sleep a bit so I could last the day.

It was a really busy day. Danielle, Diane (my roommate) and I had lunch together before going up to Open House. I’m on kids, but I had no time to look around the room because Diane was helping Danielle learn where everything was, then Danielle had to run around doing things, and needed the two of us to stay in the tween room registering people. We had a pretty constant flow of two or three families in to register at a time.

We had 30 minutes after Open House before the Entertainment Department meeting, so we just got some tea and sat in the lido for a bit. After the meeting, me and Diane had 30 minutes to kill before the drill, so we took our phones up to Club HAL and she made hers a hotspot so we could both use the internet for a bit (only 10 minutes by the time we got up there). After checking wristbands, which lasted the entire drill because half the kids didn’t have any and the other halves were too tight and needed to be replaced, we went back up to Club HAL to continue use of our phones for the 20 minutes before we had to be at Sailaway. We wandered around for the required 30 minutes (this cruise director and EM actually show up to sailaway and make sure we’re doing at least a semblance of invasive mingling) before we made our way to the Lido, ready for it to open for dinner. I wasn’t really hungry and my head was still hurting, so I ended up just forcing myself to eat some ice cream just to get some sort of something in my system, hoping that’d make me feel like eating anything else.

I’m not entirely sure how I made it through the night, it kind of helped that 45 minutes of my worktime were spent in line for the crew office to get my ID and forms signed. I’m on kids this week, and though they all seem really cute and sweet, they’re definitely a handful, a very easily distracted and non-listening handful. Though, when 10:15 finally came around and we were done cleaning up and waiting for someone to pick up the snack trays, I did feel better enough to eat two small slices of pizza- the first time today that I’d really felt well and hungry enough to eat! Diane and I went back down to the room to discover that I still didn’t have sheets, so she took me to housekeeping and we told them and they brought some to the room and made my bed for me. I unpacked a bit as they were doing that since I wasn’t really sure what else to do at the time. Once they left, Diane and I pretty much changed and went straight to bed, thoroughly exhausted.