climbing waterfalls!

February 12, 2014: Ocho Rios, Jamaica
I had raft drill this morning, but it wasn’t anything more than: do you know how to find your liferaft? okay, well then you can leave now. After the drill, I went back to the room to call Amanda since she and I had agreed last night to get off the ship together. Johan had invited her to come with a group to climb up a waterfall, so we changed our nonexistent plans and joined the group. I had 5 minutes to get ready! I managed it though! It was a fun group: Martien (now my YPC), Amanda, Johan, Megan, Matt, Cassandra and a girl from the casino. Cassandra organized it, though we didn’t know too much about it beforehand, so she was upset when we found out it was 7 dollars to rent water shoes (required to climb the falls) from the place outside, instead of 3 dollars which is what she had previously been told. Turns out that the $3 rental was INSISDE the park area. It was nice though because crew got a discount on entrance to the falls: $6 instead of $20! We put our stuff in the locker and decided that we didn’t need a guide, so we made our way to the beach, the start of the falls, on our own.

We had a fun climb and quickly realized that we were smart not to get a guide. The guided climbing groups looked absolutely terrified as they held hands and stepped up the equivalent of stairs the whole way up. That would’ve been very boring for us. We were the adventurous ones, finding our own ways up, accidently stepping in holes and walking into rocks, and stopping to take pictures every so often (Matt had a waterproof camera). The climb itself really didn’t take that long, despite our frequent photo stops, what really took longest before we started was the locker-rental for our stuff, figuring out the guide situation, wandering around taking pictures of the falls before we climbed them, and just general confusion of trying to make sure we were all together. We’d told the taxi guide that we would only be two hours, so once we finished the climb, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to get our stuff and walk 15 minutes back to the parking lot.

We had the taxi drop us off in town (only a 5 minute walk from the ship), and we got some lunch (finally, it was after 2 by then!) and wifi before heading back to the ship.

I didn’t really do anything else interesting the rest of the day. Actually, all I did do was take a nap and watch movies.

Take your family to work week

February 2-9, 2014
What a week! I’m not sure how many people have experienced “take your child to work day,” but imagine that, but for a whole week, when you work and live in the same area. It’s a bit bizarre. Here you are, with an ‘adult’ job, thinking you might finally be figuring out a little bit how to be an adult (as much as you can with this type of life on ships, after all, I don’t even have to make my own bed or food!), and then your family comes to visit. It’s not a bad thing, far from it, but it is strange.
My family actually booked this cruise a while ago, before I was even confirmed to be on this ship. Thankfully, this was one of my options and I could join my parents and uncle for their first ever cruise. Knowing this was coming, I talked to my YPC and Event Manager and worked everything out so I could 1) have most port days off, and 2) have permission to visit their rooms and eat meals with them. I worked a few extra port days last week so I could have more time off this week, I ended up only having to work on one port day, and didn’t have to do Open House! And it may seem odd that I had to get special permission to eat with them and visit their rooms, but it’s company policy that no crew member can be in a guest cabin unless working, in which case they have door stoppers to keep the door open. And, if a guest invites us to have a meal with them, we have to get permission from our event manager before we can join them, preferably a few days in advance so they can let the manager of the dining room (or the Pinnacle or Tamarind) know that we have permission. So, I just had blanket permission to be anywhere my family was.
It was a great week. I had the whole day off in San Juan, so I went on a tour with my family (thanks ShoreX for letting me go!), then we went shopping and out for dinner before we just spent time hanging out around the ship. Somehow that was the only day ashore I spent with them. I had fire drill in Grand Turk, so got off later and talked to them on the beach for a while before I headed down the beach in an attempt to find some of my friends at our usual spot. I had to work St Thomas morning, and by the time I got off the ship with Alex to go to the beach, my family had already gone and come back, and Half Moon Cay we just managed never to find one another (easily done because there were two ships there that day, so the beach was very crowded). Aside from the first night, we at least had dinner together, most often in the dining room. It was nice to have a change from eating in the Lido every single day.

January 29/30

January 29, 2014
Grand Cayman
I worked port day this morning. It wasn’t too bad, none of the kids came until 10 and the 4 of them just played MineCraft all morning until lunch. Meghna was supposed to come up at 12 to take over, but she wasn’t there by 12:05, so I had to take them down for lunch alone. We got down there and she was eating lunch with the rest of the staff (Michelle and Martien just got on board today for YPC training). She somehow had it in her head that it was sea day schedule, so she didn’t start until 1.

Thankfully she took over the rest of lunch, so I ran down to the room, called Alex and we went to the beach like we’d planned. We didn’t have a whole lot of time there, but it was still nice, just hanging out in the sun for an hour before heading back for all aboard time. There was a bit of stress with the taxi because the driver insisted upon filling the bus to capacity before leaving, so we sat there for about 20 minutes before we finally made our way back to the ship. Luckily, there were still plenty of people ashore and little line for the tender so we were early for the last crew tender.

It was movie night, so instead of killing an hour waiting in my room, I hung out in Club HAL and watched the Smurfs until a teen came in and I had to head over to the Loft. The teen and I just played xbox and Skip-Bo until he left, and then I sat and read until it was late enough for me to leave.

January 30, 2014
Cozumel
Meghna worked until around noon, but after that, she, Will (HAL Cat), Alex and I got off and went for lunch. We went to the same restaurant that we went to last time with the cast. We hung out there for a while, just hanging out and of course getting wifi. Once everyone had finally exhausted their need for internet, and we all ate, we left to go back to the ship. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I went back as well, knowing I couldn’t go out with them later because I had to work at 7 while they were all off for the night. I met up with Kim (photog) back on the ship and she said she was going to the movie showing at 4, so I went with her after I changed. The movie was “Cinco de Mayo,” I only made it through about 30 minutes of it. It was in English, Spanish and French, with English subtitles. I ended up nearly falling asleep a few times, so I regretfully told Kim I had to go, and went to the room to nap instead.

Club HAL was rather quiet. Alicia, Martien and Michelle went to the office and I ran the theme night alone, not many kids were there anyway because they probably were having late dinners or something. Not a bad day at all :)