Wednesday June 27th: Vancouver, B.C.
I mentioned the goings on of this day last blog, so I won’t rehash other than to say that this week we will be running all three ages with the three of us and LOTS of kids on board!
Thursday June 28th: First Sea Day
This morning the sea was very calm for a sea day. Several of our kids stayed in their rooms because they were not well, but overall everyone was feeling well and doing good. Last night we had a large number of registrations come in for the 3-7 year olds - so far my age group only has about 9 registered - but this MORNING, oh my goodness. We had 22 of the 27 kids on board in our little paint bucket room. It was very very busy in there. I stayed in the tween room with my few because they are older and more mature than the kids have typically been and so combining with the little kids would turn them away completely this week.
I’ve been napping a lot lately trying to get over this respiratory illness that I’ve contracted. I’m on the antibiotics and today I woke up with no sore throat and I actually did have a voice. After last night I was so sore I didn’t think I would actually have a voice this morning, but praise God I did. :)
These kids LOVE arts and crafts projects. That’s great for us because we have so many of them. We have a project called fusion beads on the schedule for an hour in the afternoon today and the project lasted 2.5 hours and they still wanted more but we had to take them down to eat ice cream. While we were trying to get out the door we had even MORE registrations in the age groups. Yikes. I think kids now has 25 of 27 registered. It’ll be a very busy day and week.
Top secret assignment night (spy night) with the little kids didn’t go over too well. There were way too many of them and they were acting totally crazy. My kids went out on their photo scavenger hunt and the girl’s team couldn’t get it together. They kept getting lost and frustrated. They found 3 of 12 items whereas the 2 boys teams found 7 or 8 of 12 items. One of the girls is extremely bossy and it’ll be interesting to see how the week goes with her there.
Friday June 29th: Tracy Arm and Juneau, AK
Today is a beautiful day in Tracy Arm. The sun is shining and the air is warm. I took my kids outside this morning for an hour to burn off some energy and I loved just being out there in the nice weather looking at the glaciers in Tracy Arm. After lunch I rested for a brief bit because my nasty cold is still keeping me pretty out of it. I have just the right amount of oomph to do my job and then I fizzle out between shifts. But, I only need what I need and I’m not asking for extra. I am content.
I was able to get off the ship in Juneau and I decided to go to the Nugget Mall in the Valley and then back to Fred Meiers. I love the convenience of the express bus in Juneau and the cost can’t be beat at $1.50 per trip. The mall was small, only about 10 stores or so, but they had 3 really nice clothing stores, a Payless Shoes, a Joann’s, and a GNC. Considering this is the only mall and it is the capital of Alaska on a landlocked peninsula it was slightly shocking, but oh well - it is Alaska after all.
I walked from the mall to Fred Meier’s and it took me about 15 minutes or so to get there. At the store I discovered that it is a full grocery store as well as a full department store. The store is literally larger than the mall and has way more stuff to offer. I picked up a few snacks and I also needed a new LCD screen protector for my pocket size camera (my previous piece of plastic was all scratched so it was hard to see if the pictures were in focus or not. They had everything that I needed and the prices were only about $.50 to a dollar higher than back home. I couldn’t take the express bus back to Juneau, so I had to sit for 45 minutes on the bus waiting for it to get to all the other stops along the way, but because I’ve now ridden it a couple times I looked like a pro pulling the cord to request a stop before the driver called out my location. Yay me!
Our theme night was slightly crazy. No one even really showed up until after 9 pm, so we only got to do about 3 games, one being my favorite called mystery food. My bossy girl has been very faithful in attending and she is grating on the other kids nerves, but I do have a couple of kids that are SUPER cool. They are 10 and 11.95 (the .95 is very important to him!) and are so so cool - Dylan and Tyler. They are so gentle and helpful towards the younger kids and nice cool fun guys with kids their own age (heartbreakers for some lucky girls in the future). I wish I could adopt them, but the parents are super cool too so I don’t think they’d let me. :)
Saturday June 30th: Skagway, AK
I have IPM this week in Skagway, but the weather isn’t that great overall so I’m not going to be missing too much. I managed to trade the morning hours to my roommate so that I got off the ship until 1:15pm, but instead of getting off the ship at 8 am I slept until 9 and got off by 9:20 am. I just don’t have my energy back yet to be up and moving rigorously on port days. Hopefully soon.
I took a few pictures in Skagway and then went to the waterfall and just hung out in the woods looking for interesting picture opportunities.
It was very enjoyable and brief but it was cold and very windy (go figure that I’d encounter wind in Skagway!). On my way back to the ship I saw a car wash that you could only say you'd see in a SMALL town like Skagway in the summer. :)At 2 pm I jumped back into my day uniform and headed upstairs to put out sports equipment and then came back to my room to work on pictures and typing out this blog for last week. I lost a whole week due to lack of energy and being so ill, so sorry for the delay. I didn’t finish typing before dinner though because I had to also do a 5 pm teen activity in the Loft that no one attended. I caught up on my teen gossip magazines and then went to dinner.
Tonight was Country Carnival and if you can believe it we got even more new kids tonight. We drop off and pick up guest in Skagway that are also doing a land portion to their vacation up in Denali and we lost 4 kids and gained about 12. Most of them were all in my tween group, so now we have a full group of tweens on board that WANT to come to Club HAL.
I had after hours baby-sitting tonight as well for 4 kids, so I made $20.00 that was nice - internet card here I come! - and the kids were fun. We played UNO and Sorry.
Sunday July 1st: Glacier Bay National Park and Canada Day (celebrated like our July 4)
Happy Canada Day! We saw the sun in Glacier Bay today for the first Sunday since I arrived on board. It was warm and beautiful and I managed to snap a couple of photos, but I didn’t have my big camera so I could only zoom so far. I was thrilled to take any photos at all in sunshine though!!
Our Huna Tlingit Cultural Interpreter this week was the supervisor, Bertha, and not the new trainee. I hope we didn’t totally petrify her last week, but thankfully we did have a knowledgeable person this week and the kids really got into asking questions and such.
The park ranger, my favorite gal Adrianna, came this afternoon and it was great that the majority of kids there were actually my tweens and they seemed really into her talk and asked some really great questions. That warmed my heart :) Afterwards we had our guest naturalist Chris come up to do a sing along with the kids and they also really enjoyed that. Yay, my tweens love Club HAL. It always makes me so excited when they are having such a great time.
For movie night we actually separated the kids and tweens tonight so that the tweens could watch a little bit older aged movie. We ended up watching Cats and Dogs (where the cats are trying to take over the world and the dogs are secret agents with really cool spy gear - cute flick that I recommend for the family) but our sound system is still just as bad as last summer so we could hardly hear it. I’m going to ask Steve if next week we can change rooms for those two hours so we can watch a movie in the Loft and actually hear what the dialogue is. Hopefully he’ll agree!
We didn’t have late night baby-sitting tonight. We had thought me might and then I wouldn’t have been able to go to the Fellowship meeting. It was very interesting tonight. Mixing different denominations is very different. The theology was a little mixed up, but the spirit and intention is genuine so we all have to learn to get along and be open to each other and not judging our differences. They are really trying hard to encourage me to lead a meeting in the future, they seem to have latched on to me very strongly and feel that I would do a great job, but I keep trying to explain to them that I don’t set my own schedule and that I don’t know until a few minutes before hand if I’ll be baby-sitting or finished cleaning or anything by 11 pm. I would hate for them to count on me and not be able to follow through. I did agree to sing a solo for the praise song “Draw me Close” because if I’m not there I’ll simply sing it during a week that I am there. I don’t feel so bad about that. It was really nice fellowshipping with the other believers and I’ve starting having conversations more often now in the Lido and when they come to clean our bathrooms in Club HAL etc. It’s nice.
Monday July 2nd: Ketchikan, AK
I am so tired today after staying out late last night and being on medication. I am starting to feel a little energy return though so that is good. We docked in Ketch at 10 am, but I didn’t get off the ship until around 12 pm. I still had a good 5 hours off the ship and I WALKED.
The roads in Ketch are like San Francisco or Duluth, MN. If you can imagine what I’m talking about and then stack them 3 times higher. It’s like going up a steep staircase without the stairs to help you. I walked up a road such as this and then walked along the sidewalk on the top of this bypass road so that I could see the whole Ketch valley and it was really beautiful. The day was really cloudy and would occasionally spit rain at me, but I’ve learned to take photos regardless of the weather because in AK any day that isn’t actually raining is a good day. It’s also interesting to see the interesting clouds on overcast days - they hold their own splendor. 
After walking high up on the bypass I came down slowly and stopped at McD’s for a PB cup McFlurry and then set out again for another hike. This time I walked to the opposite extreme of town and went on a road that lead me to a very funny house. In their front yard they had a donkey, a goat and a shetland pony. I had to take pictures because I couldn’t believe how close I was to these animals in town in a residential area. I called out to the goat and captured a funny expression as he turned his head around.
Walking past that house I took a road that I didn’t realize would lead me ALL the way back UP the mountain to the height I was at earlier in the day only this time with no access to back down except the way I’d just come. At that point it was too late to make it back to the ship and I was nervous about not making it back in time. I certainly couldn’t have walked it, but thankfully I had my trusty cell and I have the cab companies on speed dial for several of the ports and put in a call to get picked up. The friendly driver came about 10 minutes later and within five minutes I was back at the dock to board the ship with 10 minutes to spare. Whew!!! Call that cutting it close! I wasn’t ready to be fired for missing the ship, I NEED this job.We got another new staff member today. Kind of weird to get a staff person at the end of the cruise, but he flew in to Ketch today and got on board. We’ll see how he works out. Let’s just say he isn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree and literally gets lost trying to find his way out of a paper bag. Hopefully in a couple of days he’ll come around, but he has never been to college - lives with mommy and daddy - never had any responsibilities and so far only thinks of himself and no one or anything else. That doesn’t really work in this line of work so hopefully he’ll shape up.
Tuesday June 3rd: Last Sea Day
The seas were slightly large today, but nothing too horrible to handle. I’ve started taking my 1/2 Bonine Tablet the night before right before bed so that I am already medicated by morning when the seas could be swelled and rolling. That seems to be a good thing!
Cooking class went well, we had 5 kids sign up and we made delicious cheesy pretzels (soft pretzels that have the consistency of homemade biscuits), blueberry granola (great over ice cream - hot and gooey), and ice cream sandwich cookies. Yummy. :)
We had some drama in Club Hal between some staff today and everything hit the fan to the point where one person seriously threatened to get off the ship when we dock in Vancouver tomorrow. I seriously hope that doesn’t happen because I can’t run Club HAL by myself with the people we would have left. Please pray for our staff, we need some resolution of some issues. I appreciate it.
The pajama party and after hours baby-sitting were fun. We then had some crew bonding time afterwards with a few of us and we ended up staying up until 4 am. Not the best thing to do when you don’t get days off, but we needed to spend some time together. Thankfully I don’t do that every night!
Tomorrow is embark day, so I need to go to bed and get ready for the new children. :)
Hope your week was blessed and please don’t hesitate to write when you get a chance: tlbuster75@gmail.com
Luv you all,
Trish
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