start of the blues cruise

January 22, 2014:
Such a busy busy cruise! I haven’t really worked all that much, with 2 kids on board and 3 staff, we’ve divided up the hours so we’ve only worked about 3 hours each day, plus helping out with some of the random blues cruise activities. It’s been pretty fun actually. This charter is sooo different from our normal cruises!
There’s three of us this week, taking care of a grand total of 2 kids: two five year old boys. It’s been pretty laid-back. Christine, my YPC, planned it out so we only worked one session of each sea day. So, I worked the morning of the first, and so had the rest of the day off. I was feeling lazy, so ended up taking a nap until I had to help out with the Blues cruise activities. Basically, that meant sitting in the digital workshop reading and waiting for any of the artists to come by and sign posters. I worked the night shift the second sea day, and of course had to work an activity the hour and a half before work. It was a busy evening; the ships theme was Mardi Gras, so I combined that with Club HAL’s un-birthday theme (we’re deciding on themes as we go this week). The boys had fun making masks, and that ended up taking up a lot of the time. After work, I met up with Alex and Meghna in the showroom and listened to one of the bands play; we wandered around listening to various bands around the ship. Two sea days down, one to go, although these sea days really aren’t like normal sea days, I don’t really know what to make of them. Do I like them because they’re so lazy or do I not like them because I don’t really DO anything during them? I did go to the gym this morning just because I could. We had a security training, and though I was tired and wanted to go back to bed, I’d woken up this morning and told myself I was going to the gym, sooo that’s what I had to do. Now, I just need to do that more often. So much time on the elliptical is intense, but I made it through, got ready and made it to lunch at a somewhat normal time.

The best thing about this cruise though, definitely is the fact that they’ve changed the lido. Usually, breakfast closes promptly at 10, maybe a few minutes later if there’s a lot of people in line; and lunch opens sometime around 11:30. This cruise, however, breakfast is available until 2pm. Lunch is served starting around the usual time, but only on one side. One side of the main line has the normal lunch options while the other has the ‘typical’ breakfast options, one side is salads while the other is still making eggs benedict and omelets, of course the pasta and aisan stations are both available (no waffles or crepes for lunch because they’re at the pasta station), one side is desserts and ice cream while the other has the various juices, milk and cereals. It’s absolutely amazing. I don’t know why this isn’t a normal thing!? It’s not really any more work for those serving the food, they’d be at the line anyway, just giving out different types of food. All the musicians and cast members love it too because they rarely get up in time for breakfast normally. I wonder if most of the other charters eat this way? If they do, well next charter season, please let me go on a ship with lots of them! Haha


St Maarten:
Today was nice, we did port day sign-ups and neither family signed up, so Christine (who scheduled herself for port day, had anyone signed up) came out with us. It was actually quite a large group going to the beach: Amanda, Johan, Meghna, me, Alex, William (another HALCat), and of course Christine. We got lunch and wifi at a cool restaurant right across from the beach, and then Johan convinced us to take a taxi to another beach. The beach we ended up at was Airplane Beach, named so because it is right next to the airport, so planes are taking off and landing not far from where we’re laying on the beach. They were flying over our heads! It was a cool experience. At one point, a rather big jet plane took off. That was painful; the jets started up and we got sand-blasted. William actually got cut, and all of us were scrubbing sand off our faces or backs, dumping more sand out of our bags and towels, and running after stray hats. Definitely an experience that I never want to repeat, but how many people can say they spent a day at the beach with planes flying closely over their head and getting sand-blasted by a jet.

I had the full day off, so I ended up just hanging out with some of the HAL Cats and listening to music around the ship in the evening. Not at all a bad way to spend a day! :)