working port day in Istanbul

July 8, 2013: Istanbul
It was my port day today, so no getting off the ship. I had to wake up early because one of the families had an excursion at 8 and had asked if it was okay to drop their kids off early so they could make sure to get there on time. Being at work at 7:45 was weird, there was a surprisingly large number of people in the Lido as I ran through to grab a yogurt and milk to take upstairs. I guess everyone wanted to take advantage of as much time as they could in Istanbul. The two kids were the only ones there for the first two hours, we watched Winnie the Pooh and Monsters Inc. I actually almost fell asleep a few times in both of them, so I got out Lego Star Wars to play to keep my mind occupied.

A few other kids came before lunch, so I had a few to get food with. Thank goodness they all wanted pizza so we didn’t have to run back and forth between midship and Aft to get burgers/hotdogs AND pizza! That was actually the quickest lunch I’ve had on a port day with kids. We were back in Club HAL and back to our games by 12:45. It was a fairly quiet time for a while with the kids playing Lego Star Wars, Connect 4 and just playing in the taxi. As the afternoon wore on, more kids came until I had around 15. I feel kind of bad, but I was really glad it was mostly tweens there, because they’re so much easier to deal with on port days, they know exactly what they want to do or else they’re find playing Wii, Xbox or cards! It’s more difficult with the littles on port days because it’s just free time, and they don’t like to do anything for more than a few minutes and don’t know what to do until you give them a few games to play and they decide they like a game you don’t have out.

I was extremely exhausted by the time 4 came around, so I went straight to the room and to bed. When my alarm went off at 6, it scared me. I’d been sleeping so deeply I hadn’t heard Meghna get up and leave and it felt like it should be 6am. It was weird going to dinner just having woken up, but I managed to find some fruit to eat before going up to work.

Tonight’s theme was Games Galore. Leah had actually only ever done Games Galore as a board game night, but I’d had the kids make up their own. We ended up letting them get into groups and making up their own game. Oddly enough, none of the boys complained about it, they were all pretty into making their own game, as simple as some of theirs might be. Of course, most of the girls were very into it, asking me to give extra time so they could finish decorating their board. All of them turned out pretty good, some much more complicated than others, but all in all unique. With only half an hour left, we let them play one of their favorite games- Ickle Bickle (kind of like sardines, but there’s a little lego person you hide that they find, then return to their seat once they’ve found him).