Each week I will post a link from my Facebook site that can hold up to 60 pics per album. I will still post my few favorites here on the blog.
For an album of pics for this cruise go to:
http://uwm.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26149&l=4e92f&id=705660152
This is our final sea day for this first cruise, I can’t believe how quickly a week goes by when you’re having fun. I’m so glad that I work here instead of simply vacationing, because then my cruising fun is just beginning rather than already ending.
I took my seasickness combo of half a pill and wore my wristbands again today and it seems to really do the trick thus far. Yay!
The kids had a cooking class with Chef Valentine in the Culinary Arts Center today and we watched them made creations from dough that are then baked and displayed. Things like iguanas, snakes, baskets of flowers, turtles, and my favorite the frogs, were really not that difficult to make and they turned out so cute. These items are baked until they are hard as rocks and then a light glaze put on them to make them shine and used for decoration on the serving lines. The kids each got their own bits of dough to make stuff with as well and then we made ice cream sandwiches from scratch and of COURSE got to eat them. The parents were so happy that we had those delicacies right before lunch too!
The evening theme night was PJ night farewell party. We wore our PJ’s and name tags, had a pillow fight and played lots of fun games. As I was going to work tonight I heard a guest make a very disgusted comment about how people just don’t care how they go out in public anymore, just look a grown adult wearing their pajamas like it’s no big deal. I didn’t say anything, as they had already passed me, but simply chuckled as we are so often so quick to judge what we don’t know. She didn’t know that that was actually my UNIFORM for the night :)
Cruise 2 of 14: May 23 - June 6, 2007
Wednesday May 30th: Day 1 - Vancouver, B.C.
This morning, being the cheery morning person that I am, I had the distinct privilege of helping the guest as they were disembarking at 7:30 am. I enjoyed the job and the guests appreciated a smiling face on the gangway at that hour of the morning. Many others stay out until all hours at the bar and then groan over morning gangway. Seeing as how I am dead tired by the time my 10 pm shift is over and go straight to bed I am able to get up and be perky in the early morning. This worked in my favor as Vancouver was in the 80’s and gorgeously sunny this week and after my a.m. shift I was able to get off for several hours before heading back for gangway duty at 2 p.m. for embarking passengers.
I walked around Canada Place, the cruise terminal and shops, but didn’t venture too far today as I didn’t know where things were.
Most things that I will need shopping wise are within a few blocks of Canada Place, which is nice because Seattle was a 10-15 min. cab ride from the terminal to downtown.I stopped at a small corner bakery cafe and grabbed a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, granola and yogurt. I then went around and took pictures of Canada Place and it’s sails and other things of interest in the immediate vicinity. In the future I want to venture further away to Stanley Park and Kitsilano Beach (where the movie actors live!). Both of those destinations are quite close to downtown. The park I believe is within 2 miles and I can walk there, the beach is a short cab ride away across a very long bridge that spans the channel the ships all come in to port under. I don’t know if pedestrians are allowed on the bridge or not. I may be able to ride the bus there as well, but you have to have Canadian money to do so (much cheaper than a cab though) so I may need to exchange a little bit of money and grab a bus schedule.
Oh yeah, I managed to find a lens cap for my camera lens, after my original one blew into the water in Skagway on Saturday. That made me feel better and willing to take my camera out and about again.
Gangway duty went smoothly, I really really like this terminal building in Vancouver, so much nicer than Seattle’s. Boat drill was a blast, the people all stand huddled so tightly together for about 20 minutes in misery so to the dismay of the boat commanders I livened up the crowd as I was searching for any children without safety number wristbands. Each time I walked up or back I’d incite them to do the Wave or crack jokes. This relaxed some of them a bit and helped them to smile in a claustrophobic environment.
We met a few kids during our welcome meeting, but there just aren’t that many kids on board this week. It’ll be interesting to see how many actually show up in Club HAL and what their ages are.
I had exactly 2 kids show up tonight for the Welcome Aboard party from 8-10pm. One boy is named Isak from Puerto Rico, he’s 9 and his English reading and speaking skills are impeccable. I was super impressed and he is a really fun kids so far. Another girl showed up, 11 years old, named Cate and she was really nice as well. She will be getting off in Skagway to continue her vacation via land tour up to Denali. That is the weirdest thing about this itinerary is we have people going and coming half way through.
Thursday May 31st: Day 2 - First Sea Day
I knew from last week to plan ahead this week for seasickness. I am working all alone in my room this week and couldn’t be down for the count, so I used my so far successful remedy and took the half pill as soon as I got up. I now know it takes my body 30-60 min. to fully appreciate the effects of the pill so I allotted an extra half hour before needing to go upstairs. I took the pill and then laid on the floor in my room for 30 minutes before getting ready for work. That took the edge off enough to get ready. By the time the kids were coming up for activities at 9 am I was feeling pretty perky overall. The seas on this itinerary tend to calm down from about 11:30 am to about 9:00 pm which works out perfect so that I can eat lunch and dinner and only have to clean basically when it starts in again and then I go to bed. Tonight though having taken the pill I was in much better shape then last week and made it through with flying colors. :) Yay!
Friday June 1st: Day 3 - Juneau, AK
I am on IPM today so after running activities for the kids this morning I did a load of laundry, went up to the Oasis deck for a little while and enjoyed the warm sunshine, then went into the Loft (teen room) and caught up on emails. I found that if I typed everything that I wanted to send off and then prop my laptop in the porthole long enough to get a dockside wi-fi signal to send I could go back and forth getting some stuff updated that I wanted to do. That worked pretty slick. I didn’t want to sit and prop it there the entire time, so being able to work on stuff and then just put it up there to send/receive worked out just right. Thankfully the windows are slightly tinted from the outside or the guest walking by the railing would have thought it a little odd. I didn’t care, after using an entire internet card last week I needed to grab a little free wi-fi when I could. :) Oh, and to clarify, my donation statements last week were meant to be taken as a joke (Mom thought I should clarify that as she claims my years working for the Salvation Army were a little too ingrained and she thought I was serious!!! he-he-he!). Hopefully you thought it lighthearted in the manner in which it was written.
I got to host the guest artists this evening when they came on board from 5:30-8:00 pm. That will be a weekly job for whoever is assigned to IPM in Juneau. They were very nice and host classes on different things from making native Alaskan ceremonial costumes to beading or culture of the Tlingit tribes in the area.
Club HAL’s theme night tonight was Brave the Night. I revived that from last year as it was my favorite night. The kids have to do different challenges like on Survivor and the team with the most points wins and they get a prize. We had five attend and that was a pretty good turn out. Last night was supposed to be Mystery Spy Night and only one girl showed up so we did different card tricks and such for each other. For the theme tonight I needed some different items from different departments and managed to use my positive attitude and smiling face to get each of the things I needed. It’s amazing how far a smile and kind word go in this world, more people ought to try it--they’d be amazed by the results.
Saturday June 2nd: Day 4 - Skagway, AK
Today was a weird day, we were the only ship in Skagway (last week we were one of three) and so the town felt sort of deserted. I got off the ship around 9:30 am and didn’t have any definite plans other than to go for a nice long walk and see what I could see. On the way out of town (7 blocks long and 4 blocks wide) I stopped at the original Skaguay depot building which is not an organic and natural food outpost. I bought a most delicious nectarine and it was very very juicy and sweet. Organic produce always is so amazing compared to non-organic in flavor. I then just started walking.
I walked past the garden and restaurant I went to last week. I walked about 6 miles around curvy bends and up a steep 2 lane highway that leads to the next town over. I was hoping to get up high enough to have a scenic lookout. After walking for about and hour and a half though I didn’t want to go any higher and not be able to make it all the way back to the ship. Skagway is so small they don’t have cabs if you get to tired to walk, so I would have had to make it back somehow. So at the point I knew I shouldn’t climb any further I turned around and had a downhill trek back to town - much much easier and less tiring of course.Along the way I saw a tree growing out of the side of some sheer rock. I call that photo “Determination”. I walked through a small cemetery to learn the stories of the local folks and saw some interesting things there.
Walking back into town I was getting really hungry and love to try local flavors, but Skagway residents earn all of their annual income during the summer months so the prices were totally outlandish. Well, ok not outlandish compared to going out for a really nice dinner in a metropolitan area (seafood, steak, etc.) but when halibut fish and chips costs $18.50 there is something wrong. I knew that they would be serving salmon for dinner on the ship and so I grudgingly got back on, careful not to lose any camera parts on the way back inside, and put on my uniform to go have dinner in the Lido for free. It was good, probably as good or better than anything I would have had off the ship so it turned out fine.Tonight’s theme was Country Carnival, so after dinner I donned my country outfit and went upstairs to set up the room with games and such. One of my older tweens came up early to see if I was around and helped me set up. Her name is Cassie and she has 2 younger sisters also in my room and she likes to find time away from them when she can. The youngest is 5 and so she ends up being the obligatory big sister/baby sitter quite often it seems. We had a good time together and then the other kids came for the carnival games a little later on.
Each night after I clean up I take the leftover snacks down to the P.O. bar which is for the international crew (Filipino and Indonesian, plus all other crew can hang out there too but most others hang out in the Officers Bar or OB). Because we get such great snacks in Club HAL I hate to waste them and so when the PO guys see me coming they get excited wanting to know what snacks I’m bringing them. Last night I had a really nice fruit platter with kiwi, strawberries, grapes, melons, etc. Tonight I have bags of popcorn and a really fancy cheese platter, the dancers on board saw the cheese and went crazy. We really get the munchies when food is only available during set hours, unlike home where you can grab a snack whenever. It must be psychological because at home I hardly ever snack but on the ship I get ravenous.
Sunday June 3rd: Day 4 - Glacier Bay National Park
Glacier Bay is always such a beautifully scenic day, this summer I don’t get to really appreciate it though. We keep the kids indoors doing morning activities and then during lunch, when I would go and take pictures last summer, we have our planning meeting for the upcoming cruise. Oh well. These past two Sundays have been raining anyway. If we hit a gorgeous day with blue sky and sunshine I need to skip lunch and just go out on deck and grab a few photos. Hopefully I can do that before all the snow melts, because it is so much more awe inspiring with all the glacial ice in the water and snow on the peaks.
I had a parent get mad at me today because I wasn’t specifically paying every second of attention to her 4 year old child who has the attention span of about 2 minutes and is then ready for another activity. We’ve tried to patiently explain to her that Club HAL isn’t a daycare or baby-sitting service, it is organized group activities. If a child cannot participate in a group setting or isn’t interested in a particular activity on the schedule then they should come at a time when they can participate or do want to do an activity. It isn’t fair to the rest of the kids who are there for the planned event to have my attention constantly drifting to the one child who wants to do his own thing. She didn’t really like that, actually she was quite disgusted with us, but Dad got it and hopefully will get her to understand that we aren’t being mean or discriminating against her children.
I got to perform in Master Chef Dinner again this evening. It may be the last time I do it this summer as our kid counts are going to soar after next week. Next week I have 14 tweens and 9 kids on the roster and there are 6 teens on the roster. So, if the teens start showing up for activities then I’ll have all the young’uns to myself. We are discussing moving mature tweens up in programming if we don’t have 16 and 17 year olds coming to activities. If it is mainly 13 and 14 year olds then it isn’t a problem to include a few 12 year olds and possibly 11 year olds so that the programming geared for 3-7’s won’t be too young for them. I try hard to balance it according to the maturity level of the majority of kids and this week it’s gone pretty well over all. The oldest attendee has 5 and 9 year old sisters, so she is already used to doing stuff with young children. The other older tween likes to still play like a kid, so it works out good.
The kids got to watch the newer Disney Pixar movie “Cars” while I was doing the Master Chef Dinner. I really like that movie. It has stuff in it for every age and I find myself crying at the end even though I’ve seen it now more than once. It has a lot of good messages geared for different ages and it is a good pick for whole family viewing.
We reordered our theme nights this week so that Pirate Night is tomorrow night. That works out good so that Pirate Night and Dessert Extravaganza in the Lido aren’t on the same night. Our treasure hunt clues tend to disappear when it lands on Dessert Extravaganza-Not COOL. Another benefit to having Master Chef and Pirate night on two separate nights is I only have to wear my uniform two nights during the cruise for night time programming. I always love wearing something besides Khaki, navy and white tennis shoes. Thursday I wear black spy clothes, Saturday I wear jeans and plaid country clothes, tonight for Master Chef is black pj/exercise pants, comfy black slip ons, and the chef hat and jacket, tomorrow pirate wear which is also comfy, Tuesday night I’ll again wear pj’s and my comfy slip ons. Got to love that!
Monday June 4th: Day 6 - Ketchikan, AK
We don’t dock (no tendering this week!) until 10:00 am, so I got to sleep until 9 am this morning. That was good, I was so tired after having a full sea day and doing Master Chef Dinner that I fell asleep around 11 pm and woke up at 9 am, so I got around 10 hours of sleep. I need to get a lot of rest because at least three of the crew are down with Norwalk like symptoms and are on quarantine from the Engine Dept. Yikes. So far the count isn’t high enough to bring us into Code Red and we are sanitizing everything extra carefully to hopefully stay out of Red. That is NO FUN! The sick crew are also going through extra long quarantines, 72 hours after the LAST time they got sick, instead of 24 hours from the 1st time they got sick, to ensure that others aren’t infected if possible.
I got off the ship at 11:15 am with a lady named Moira who is married to the Chief Security Officer. I may have mentioned her before, she is from Calgary Alberta Canada. She is a dear and I am so glad to have met her. We went around looking at things in Ketch today and then she got back on board at 2 pm to meet up with her hubby for his couple hours off in port. I then went and looked in some of the shops. She is specifically wanting an Alaskan made sun catcher with a Forget-me-not, the Alaska state flower. Strangely enough you can find Eskimos, Huskies, Norther Lights, etc., but no Forget-me-nots. After wandering around in the shops I went for a long walk about 4 miles out of town.
I decided after dropping off Moira that I wanted to find Saxman Totem Park. It is one of the destinations for an excursion and I remembered last year people telling me how to get there. These small landlocked cities are really hard to get lost in as the road only goes about 8 miles one direction, 18 the other and there is only one main road each way with a few side streets up in the hills. I did in fact find the Totem Park and it was very interesting. I didn’t spend any time looking around when I got there though as it was raining all day and was getting later in the afternoon. I called up the trusty cab company, they have very nice cabbies in Ketch that love to also play tour guide as they drive, to get me back to the ship on time. I had two hours but after walking all day I was pretty tired and didn’t want to have to worry about getting an overuse injury in my knees (been there done that and it’s no fun - couldn’t walk properly for 6 months because of one over strenuous hike summer of 2005) so I called for a ride and 7 minutes later they pulled up. Now that I know where it is it won’t seem so far next time, so if the day is nice I’ll walk that way immediately and then have plenty of time to enjoy the park and walk back to the ship. I think it’s either as far or maybe even closer than Walmart, which is 5 miles the opposite direction from downtown.
Tonight’s theme was Pirate Night and it was so nice to have a good pirate costume this year. The week before leaving Milwaukee I went thrift shopping and found some amazing deals at a 1.99 store. I needed khaki’s for work and also searched for theme wear. I found the perfect shirt for a pirate shirt, a striped sash, I already owned black pirate pants and black shoes, the pirate patch elastic strap needed lengthening with elastic from the craft store, and I owned a bandana. When I walked into the Cruise Director’s office this evening they all thought I looked super cute. Yay!! How fun.
The kids looked cute too in their pirate hats and face paint. We went on our treasure hunt around the ship, but there actually weren’t too many people out and about to say “Aaaaargh” and “Ay ay Captain” to. Oh well, next week! :)
That is my update for this week. I’ll fill you in on the last sea day and Vancouver in the next entry. Tonight is hour forward night as we always gain an hour going into Alaska and lose an hour coming back to our home port. So I’ll sign off now as it is 12:32 am PST Thursday morning after hour forward adjustment in time.
I hope that you had a joyous week, miss you all.
Be blessed,
T
