Part Deux

Holy Cow I cant BELIEVE that I have been on this ship for a month! It's crazy how fast time passes here. SO, after one month of ship life this is what I have learned:

First there is a difference between staff and crew. I fall under the staff category, so do your casino workers, Entertainment staff, sales, etc. Crew members on the other hand are housekeeping, maintenance, and wait staff. Now I don't really see much of a difference besides the job description but that is where I am wrong. On the ship I am allowed to 'guest privlidges', meaning, I can go to the lido deck on port days and eat lunch, or work out in the guest gym. Crew, however, can not. Also below the ship we have a staff mess and a crew mess. The staff can eat at either mess. The crew can only eat in the crew mess. The difference between the two is in the staff mess there are waiters who clear your plates and deliver your food if you choose to order some. In the crew mess you clear your own damn plates and get our own damn food. So moral of the story is if you decide to work on a ship sign on as staff not crew.

Next, be careful who you smile at. On our ship we have 55 different nationalities, and not many of those nationalities speak English as their first language. But, despite a little language barrier I was determined to make friends. I figured an international way to say 'hey I'm nice would you like to be my friend' would be to give everyone a nice big smile as I passed them in the hallway. When I told Justin, a member of the camp carnival staff, my brilliant plan he told me that when I smile at people they don't think I want to be friends with them they think I want to have sex with them. Needless to say I haven't been smiling as much anymore. lol :)

Last, find something that works and don't change it at all. I have found that there is a lot of repetition in my line of work. Carnival wants consistency from week to week to maintain excellence. Which is understandable but a little annoying. For example on our teen movie night I am only allowed to show the movie Beastly. I will be watching the movie Beastly every Wednesday night for the next six months..Ufdah.We also take the kids to a show on Friday night, the amazing gravity defying juggling/comedy routine. Its a great show but it doesn't change from week to week and I mean at all. For example, the juggler calls a male volunteer from the audience each week to juggle hatchets over his body as the volunteer lays on the stage. Amazing right! Well for protection the juggler gives the man a yellow construction helmet to cover his face with so he doesn't flinch, and you know, get hit in the face with a hatchet. Well ,the male volunteer took the helmet from his face and moved it a little south if you know what I mean. The crowd went nuts with laughter, as did I. I didn't, however, laugh as hard when a different male volunteer did the same thing the next week and the week after that. In the same vein, we have a newlywed show on the ship. The last question they always ask the couples is always 'what is your husbands favorite condiment?' Every week the elderly couple mistakes the question for 'what is your husbands favorite condom' and the woman always says "we dont have to worry about that any more" and the husband always says "Trojan". Its funny, but it's a little dissapointing for me to know all these moments are staged. Like finding out Santa isnt real.

Questions Answer time..

Thanks for the questions.
Sarah I preformed a wonderful rendition of no scrubs. The kids then asked if I could sing a song they know next time. And my heart broke a little bit.

KJ There are many good looking men on the ship and its nice because I have yet to pay for a drink at the crew bar :)

I have not made a kid cry. But the staff at camp carnival who work the night shift sometimes try and make the kids cry. Why?! Well if a kid is crying we have to call the parents and have them pick up their kids. If all the kids are picked up the staff get to leave. Tricky tricky. But I would never do such a thing. haha

Thats all I have for you this week. I miss everyone at home so much message me and call me to give me updates on your lives! I love to hear from everyone.

Peace Out

Baptism By Fire

 Let me start out by saying:
#1 I'm working on the title
#2 No judgements on my terrible writing ability
#3 Enjoy!!

I can’t even pick a word to describe my first week with Carnival. So let me just take you to back to day one…

 As I entered the Carnival Legend I was greeted by unfamiliar faces and I was told to immediately report to the CTC. When I asked where the CTC was they responded past the F&B. Right how silly of me past the F&B is always the most logical first place to look. I did finally make it to the CTC (or the crew training center if you are in the know) after going through a few wrong doors. Then I attended a 10 minute meeting where we were told how to keep the ship safe. I now know how to put out a fire on the ship, how to save a passenger who has decided to jump off the ship, and how to run the line up for the lifeboats drill at the start of every cruise. Approx two minutes later I got to put my skills to the test. I was given a handful of wrist bands and told to report to Deck C to direct traffic and place wrist bands on children ages 11 and under for the lifeboat safety drill. Only a few questions popped into my head at this moment like “um, does it matter that I don’t have a uniform” and “Where exactly is Deck C” apparently neither of these things really mattered. No time like the present I suppose and I was on my way. Luckily, because I wasn’t in uniform I could easily ask anyone for directions even passengers who looked well informed (shh don’t tell). After that things got even more overwhelming. I started my training with Laetitia who is from South Africa, basically, how training works is you shadow the person you will be replacing for one week and badda bing badda boom you are off. Laetitia is very nice and super helpful but two minutes after meeting her she tells me that she isn’t at the end of her six month contract but leaving early after only two months. Turns out she hates the work…….fantastic. At this point all I could think was I made a huge mistake; I have just made this massive mistake.  I just kept thinking, how in the world am I going to make it through the next six months, but after a couple more hours with Laetitia we met the Camp Carnival kids who we would be working with throughout the week. Most of them were from Tennessee and Alabama and were on their fall break but they were all hilarious. We got them all registered and played a few get to know you games and by the time our welcome dance party rolled around I was having a blast. Everyday I work from 4-6ish and then from 8:30-1am and all I have to do is play camp games like ninja, facilitate scavenger hunts, and kick the kids butts in Wii Just Dance. I still can’t believe that I am being paid to do this. Not to mention the ice cream socials and make your own pizza parties (after the all you can eat pizza party I found out where the gym was pronto!). I don’t usually consider myself a night owl so staying up until 1am with the kids and then heading to the crew bar afterwards for a wine and cheese tasting or the “P” theme crew party (“P” theme is where you come to the party dressed as something that starts with P, all of the camp carnival people are going to be pregnant) is kind of hard but the nice thing is I get to sleep in as long as I want.  So after a rough beginning I can honestly say I am so happy with my new job. Whenever we port I can go out and catch some rays while sitting pool side sipping a beer.

The people I work with are great, my roommate is nice, the room is small but fine, and the crew food is…..ok so the food isn’t great but honestly I can deal with that. Really the only real problem I have is karaoke. We have Karaoke twice a week and if the kids don’t want to sing then I have to for an hour. Ugh!, those poor kids. But, Alan our Karaoke man is always good for a laugh so its not all bad J

This being my first blog I don’t really know the direction it will take. I would like to answer any questions you have about sea life. Before I left Randy asked about water storage on the ship. So here is your answer Ran Man. The ship has two large storage units that hold water. Now if we were to run out of water at sea the solution is simple. The crew members lose water. First they shut down the laundry and if after that we are still running short they turn off our showers. So lets all keep our fingers crossed that it will never come to that. Oh and speaking of smelling bad. It turns out they don’t order your uniform until you get on the ship and it takes two weeks to come in. So Laetitia has given me one uniform set which includes track pants a blue polo and a XXXL track jacket. In short I look hot and dangerous.

I miss everyone back home so much. Feel free to comment ask questions ect… I would love to hear from you.