I'm free again!

July 15, 2013: Venice
I got cleared a little after 10, but breakfast was already closed, so I ended up just staying in the room waiting for Meghna to get back since she was cleared about the same time as me. She finally came back and we talked about how boring it was being isolated, then went up for lunch. I was a bit overwhelmed when I got to the Lido: people, natural light, noise, open space, food! One of my tweens from last week who’s staying on for this cruise too came up to me and hugged me. That startled me a bit, but I recovered and she told me about how she fell in the Canal this morning. I had a nice lunch (much better than all that room service!), then went up to work. I was still a bit disoriented because I don’t know this kids room very well, and because I’d been stuck in a small room for the last 24 hours; I accidently kept running into walls. April and I had about 10 kids show up, one was a bit frustrating because she hit the other kids, and refused to do anything we asked, we had to talk to her parents when they came, she may not come again. The others were great though, some are related and they’re from all over: North Carolina, Australia, Denmark, Sweden and Ukraine. It’s interesting working with these younger ones because about half of them don’t speak English or don’t speak it well. It’s going to be a very strange week. They all had fun at least!

I took a nap during my break (all that lying about yesterday made me tired today), then I went up to the Queen’s Lounge to help decorate for the Venetian Ball tonight. Lots of tying of balloons, I got a cut on my thumb from tying up so many. Then we had to put them up everywhere. I was given the task of standing on tables and attaching them to the ceiling (because we knew the table wouldn’t break with my weight). By the time we finished (it was me, Ryan and two of the beverage staff who came to help us actually put the balloons on the walls/ceiling; other people were supposed to help, but no one showed up) it was already nearly 7 and I hadn’t eaten, so Ryan let me be late for work in order to get some food. I ate a small meal really quickly; I felt bad because April had already been alone with the kids yesterday. Camp Night was successful. We had them decorate a sign during free time, then we had them make bears, went on a bear hunt, then took them to show off their masks at the Venetian Ball (where we discovered that they all like to dance), then came back to Club HAL and played dancing 4 Corners. We had them dance to the music for a while, then turned it off, closed our eyes, counted to 5 and then chose a corner. They all really enjoyed that and didn’t want to stop even when their parents came.