It's 10 1/2 weeks until the end of my contract (and 44 days
till my birthday!). It seems crazy that I've been here so long already. I'm not
going to lie though, I am starting to get a little tired.
It's been almost a month and a half since I wrote last, what
have I been up to since then? I don't even know if I can remember.
Well, on the 21st, my mom and my sister came to cruise. That
was super exciting. I went out to dinner most nights with them, and luckily Bry
got to come a few times too. I also saw a couple of the shows. Bry, being the
awesome roomie that she is, covered a shift for me so that I could go. Then to
say thank you I got my sister to buy her a beer from the pub we're not allowed
in :) haha. I only really got to see them in the evenings, as I was working
during the day, or they were on an excursion. I was lucky enough to get most of
the day in St Maarten off so I got to go on an excursion with them. It was a
see and sea tour, so a bus tour through both sides of St Martin/St Maarten, and
a glass bottom type boat tour as well. I didn't like the boat part, felt super
awful with how much it was rocking. We got to stop in Marigot, the French
capital, and do some shopping. Or in our case, walk around a bit and buy frozen
yogurt. I'm kicking myself for not buying Bry a shot glass that had a skull and
crossbones and said "same ship different day". I'm hoping we can get
to the French side before our contract is up, even though it's an expensive
taxi ride. I think they enjoyed their week, I hope they did. Saying good bye on
Saturday was the hardest thing to have to do. They had to meet for their
tour at 7:45, and since I started work at 9, I met them at 6 in the
morning and we had breakfast together. I waited with them until they got called
to get off the ship and then walked with them to the promenade. I was going to
walk them all the way to the gangway, but I didn't feel like having to walk
down the whole promenade crying. Apparently there was another couple on the tour
with them that saw me walking away. It really sucked. I thought having them
visit would make the rest of my contract easier, but so far it hasn't. It's
made me even more homesick.
We've had a few people leave, and new people come on board.
Including our manager this week. Actually as I'm writing this, I still haven't
met the new manager (he came yesterday). I think the crew changeover is one of
the things I'm struggling with the most. I don't like change to begin with, but
then I get used to certain people or things being a certain way, and then
they're different.
We've gotten off a few times in port. Sometimes it's hard
trying to work around both mine and Bry's schedules to be able to get off. We
don't do too much when we're off the ship, mostly just walk around, look in
shops and usually find somewhere to eat lunch. We're still hoping to be able to
play with dolphins in Mexico, and I still really want to do the Labadee zipline
(I'm trying to convince Bry to do it also). I have a whole list of things I
wanted to do, but somehow I don't think I'm going to get it all done.
I had to do lifeboat filling again. And I'll probably have
to do it at least once more before I'm done, as they do it every 3 months. At
least this time I was sitting with people I knew so it made it seem a lot
quicker. I've also had to do assembly station leader training. So basically
going over everything I have to do in case of emergency and in passenger drill
every Saturday. Turns out I knew most of it already, which is a good thing
since I've been doing it for almost 3 months. I also had glow party and parade
rehearsals. I'm still not on stilts, but one of the guys is leaving soonish so
I might be next on the list. Fingers crossed. Our route for the parade changed
a little bit, but what we were told to do, and when and where we need to be at
the end don't really coincide, so our new motto for the parade is "screw
it, just give'r" and as long as we don't run over any small children,
penguins, artwork or guys on stilts, we're good. For glow party one of the
girls from sports is leaving in 3 weeks, so I'll probably have to step up and
do the other 2 choreographed dances. I'm not sure how well that will go, I
think I've got half of both dances, and I still struggle with the one I have to
do each time.
We still go out to dinner a lot. Still mostly Sabor and
Johnny Rockets, but we've also been to Chop's and 150 Central Park.
Both are specialty restaurants that cost extra (like $39 and $30), but we went
on discounted days (either special days for crew or formal nights) so we got it
a little bit cheaper. I got filet mignon at Chop's, and I was super excited
that I could get spinach with it. Sad that I was excited about that, but it was
delicious. 150 Central Park is a set 4 course menu, so I was a little
concerned about that, but it ended up being really good. For the main you have
a choice between fish or beef, so I obviously chose the beef haha. They have 2
different menus, one for each half of the cruise, so I'll hopefully be back to
try the second menu.
I've done a few more lessons. I'm still not awesome at it, but I'm getting better. unfortunately we haven't really had much time to ride in the past couple of weeks. It was pretty cold in the evenings for a little while, and then with my family coming we just didn't get out. Now we're getting into the high counts for spring break so it's going to be tough to find time to ride in the next couple weeks as well.
As I'm counting down the last half of my contract, I'm
starting to stress myself out about what I want to do next. Do another
contract, go back to Blue, find something else, and if I do another contract do
I try and work on my vacation or do I just take time off? Plus then not knowing
what ship I'll be offered or how long m vacation will be is hard as well. I
need to stop thinking about these things until closer to when I have to
actually deal with them. But overall I'm still enjoying myself, so that's a
good thing.
With the rate I'm going I might have one more post up before
I come home. Stay tuned. :)
