ketchikan is blog day it seems

June 19, 2014
I guess blog writing/posting is going to be a Ketchikan thing now. It’s a nice port and all, but there’s not a whole lot to do, but that’s kind of nice since it seems like I haven’t had a whole lot of down time since getting here. There’s just so much to do! Especially since I’ve been helping train two new staff over the past two weeks. Carl left last Vancouver, and another YPC and youth staff got on. Megan is brand new to HAL (she’s actually friends with Christine, the YPC coming on next week). She’s working with the kids, I’m with the tweens, Lindsay’s with the teens and Laurie is floating between us. Not too bad of a setup, but it keeps us all very busy and we’re teaching the two where things are, what we can/can not do, and all the rest of that. PLUS, it’s DWTS at sea theme cruise this week. We haven’t done much stuff with that, but it is there, and we have gone out some at night out and about the ship. One of the troupe dancers actually remembered me from the cruises in January, I was definitely surprised at that.

Juneau day, I got off on my own for a bit, finally got some much-needed supplies like tissues and more hand soap, then when Laurie and Megan got off, I met up with them and we hung out for a while, briefly met up with Nick and Sam (rig tech and club hal I met last time on the zuiderdam, they’re on the westie right now and we’re in port every Juneau together), we got food (Hawaiian pizza crepe for me, YUM), then had to head back for work. Quiet night at work, only 4 kids showed up for movie night. That was very nice since we actually got to watch the movie as well instead of dealing with a lot of other stuff and behavioral problems at the same time.

Skagway was a crazy day. I had the morning port day shift; it was fine for the first hour, but then the day turned into insanity with lots of things going on at once, including a fire (not at work, one of the wires in the gym started smoking) at one point. I ended up staying the entire port day to help out Megan (since it was her first one), good thing too, because the insanity would not stop! I think she was glad to have someone experienced with her since things just kept seeming to go wrong. We were finally able to get off the ship when all the kids got picked up (finally), and it was cold and windy and a bit rainy. Happily, the sun did come out for a bit, and we enjoyed that despite the persistent wind. We went ‘shopping’ around town, she bought a raincoat (she didn’t come entirely prepared for cold/rainy weather), and I bought a new hoodie and a small birthday present for Lindsay (it seems to be the season for birthdays, mine was a few weeks ago, Lindsay’s on Skagway day, and Megan’s will be Vancouver day. We ended up just deciding to have dinner back on the ship so we wouldn’t spend any more money unnecessarily.

Glacier Bay day was almost just as insane as Skagway, but three of us were there to take care of it so it was a lot better.

The DWTS production show was last night, so we took turns at the end of the work night to change into formal so we could run down and see it as soon as the kids left. We stayed out after the show, and hung out at the Northern Lights with some of the dancers and other crew members. It was a nice night, but I was tired, so we didn’t stay out really late.

This morning, I got to sleep in! Only until 8:30ish, but that’s later than I have lately! I went to breakfast with Megan and hung out for a bit until the gangway cleared up, then wandered around Ketchikan for an hour in the rain. We got hungry and tired of the wet, so we found a place to get lunch, and headed back to the ship so she could get to work.