Back on board the Dream!

Sept. 16^h, 2013

I have officially been back on board the Dream for 9 days and I’m already writing a blog?!?!? What?!? I know some of you can’t believe it and I can’t believe it myself either!!

I had a fantastic first week back on board; I don’t think I could have asked for much more. Just being able to walk on the ship and seeing familiar faces was so nice. I was extremely excited to see everyone again including a few very special people.

My flights back were relatively uneventful. I didn’t sleep much, got to watch the sunrise flying in to NYC, got some cool pictures of NYC flying out again and found the humidity again when I got to Florida. My bags made it all the way to Orlando, so that saved me a very big headache. Picked up my bags and went to catch the bus to the ship. When I got back to the ship I had to do the normal sign on stuff while seeing people that I hadn’t seen in 7 weeks! I felt so loved all day when I was walking around the ship and everyone saw me again and would run up to me and give me big hugs!! I got put into the smallest cabin in the entertainment corridor, but I shouldn’t be there long as I’m hoping to switch to this coming Saturday since cast change is just about over and the old cast will be leaving. I have an awesome roommate; she is the other host that signed on with me! Her name is Amy and she is from England. Super sweet and we just instantly bonded.

I got back into the normal duties during the week starting off with cooking demonstration and the hairy chest competition! I called what seemed like just about every game of bingo we played last week. I was also on nightclub last week, so that means that I’m the host of the night club all week. We are also trying something new with the line for the comedy club so I have been working on making that better. Oh, and the weather the first week was absolutely wonderful!!

I’m currently sitting back on the ship writing this and looking out the window at the rain pouring down in Cozumel. It’s been overcast just about all day with some rain here and there but now it’s really raining. We are getting some of the hurricane that is near by. Hopefully as we head south tonight we can find some nicer weather.

One of my favorite things about my first week back was that I was able to see one of my favorite families I’ve ever met since I’ve started working for Carnival. Bill and Sherrie were back this week and I was so happy to see them!! They cruised back in May with their son Brandon who has now moved to Colorado. They are just some of the sweetest people and I am very blessed that I was able to meet them back in May and see them again last week. Hope I can see you both again soon! J

Since I signed back on during an eastern cruise, I was able to go through immigration in San Juan, which was extremely nice that I didn’t have to do it Saturday and waste half of my day away. So Saturday I made plans to go to Kennedy Space Center with Vusi. It was pretty cool to see again, since the last time I was there was back in 2000!! I didn’t remember everything but there were a few things. Since they aren’t having any more shuttle launches there you are now able to drive up closer to the actually launch pad rather than just to the observation tower. I will attach some pictures to the bottom of this post so you can see some of the things that I saw.

One last pretty amazing thing that happened Friday night was that we had a gentleman shave his head on stage during bingo. There was a group on board called Southern Cruiser’s Riding Club. They were a motorcycle club who liked to raise money for St. Jude so when they heard about what we were doing with our Groove for St. Jude, they immediately wanted to get involved. For those of you who haven’t heard about Carnival’s Groove for St. Jude event it is one of my favorite things that Carnival does. All week long guests are able to purchase a t-shirt and wristband for $10. All the money goes straight to St. Jude’s children’s hospital and Carnival matches every dollar. On the very last sea day we do what we call Groove for St. Jude. This is where for 30minutes to 1 hour we have t-shirts available up on the Lido deck and we do some dances to get people involved and get the word out there. We normally sell about $1,000.00 worth of shirts up on lido then that gets added to whatever the formalities shop sells during the week so we are normally somewhere between $2,000.00 & $3,000.00 for the week which is awesome!! We are currently #5 in the fleet for this event when it comes to sales! I’m hoping to break into the top 3! Well, this group that was on board had raised 1.4 million dollars on their own all for St. Jude’s children hospital!! They gave the lido deck the challenge of if we could raise $5,000.00 that day there was a gentleman that wanted to shave his head. He hadn’t had a hair cut in over 20 years so you can imagine how long his hair was!! Well, we weren’t sure how much we had raised that day because we don’t get the number until after the cruise usually, but the man wanted to do it anyway. We set up a make shift barbershop on the stage and he got his hair cut during bingo and he was going to donate his hair to locks of love!! A very cool thing I thought and definitely put a nice end to my first week back. It was kind of ironic too, because my last week before vacation I had a gentleman come up to me and want to donate $1,000.00. I’ve been extremely blessed to be able to witness some incredible acts of kindness.

One last thing that I want to share with you before I end this is that back at the end of April and beginning of May I had the pleasure of meeting one of my other favorite families I’ve met while working for Carnival. I met Emily, Mason and Jen while I was on my flight back to the ship after coming home for the week of Kurt’s birthday. Emily was traveling with her mother Jen, father Dennis, brother Mason, and sister Allison. Emily was a bit shy at first, but we started talking about why they were flying down to Orlando and come to find out they were coming to cruise on the Dream!! J I immediately started telling them all about the ship and where we were going, what places we were going, and how much fun they were going to have. I instantly grew attached to Emily, as she was absolutely adorable! I hadn’t had the chance to meet Allison and Dennis yet, as they were a couple rows up on the airplane. I know they all had a fantastic week by the end of it and loved every minute of it. Every time I saw the little ones they would always run up to me to give me hugs, it truly made my day! It was also nice having just left my family to find a wonderful family to create some awesome memories with. By the end of the week, the girls, Emily & Allison had invited me to dinner with them. I told them I would try my best, but no promises. Well I couldn’t let down two of the cutest girls ever!! I found a way to make it to dinner with them and had a great time. The girls weren’t ready to leave the next day as they were crying at the dinner table when the waiters started singing their good-bye song. It was sad saying bye to them as well, but promised I would keep in touch and visit someday! Well, just this past week there was something published that a few people have found, but I’m assuming most of you probably haven’t. The something that was published was a comment from Jen to John Heald’s blog. John Heald is the senior cruise director and a huge face of the company. He posted this and thousands of people have read it. I cannot thank Jen enough for the amazing and super sweet comments that she has said about me. Their family really touched my heart and I really hope to see them again hopefully sooner than later. If you are curious to what Jen wrote about me here it is….

From the Blog.....................

Jennifer Price asks:

Hello John,

I wanted to write this to bring a staff member to your attention. My husband and I took our three children on their first cruise on the Carnival Dream this past April.  While on the plane, my eight-year-old began talking to the young woman next to us.  Imagine our surprise when we learned that she was an entertainment host on the very ship we were headed to!  Alyssa Ramont went out of her way, starting on the airplane, by showing my daughter pictures of the ship and different ports and telling her about all the fun things in Camp Carnival. Alyssa knew our entire family’s names and room number before we even landed.  She went out of her way the entire week to say hello and to involve our children in the dance parties and other activities. Alyssa is one of the reasons that my children now want to go on a cruise more than going to Disney World! She is also one of the reasons that my husband and I will be taking our fourth Carnival cruise on the Carnival Liberty as an anniversary present on August 17. I hope we can meet more outstanding employees on that ship!

John says:

Hello Jennifer Price,

I am so sorry that I missed your latest cruise before I answered this and I do hope that you had a great time. Thanks so much for these precious words for Alyssa and I will make sure she sees this and indeed that her supervisors do as well. Thanks so much for taking the time to write and I do hope you all had fun on the Carnival Liberty and that we will see you all soon. Best wishes.

John

…We have now set sail from Cozumel and are heading to Isla Roatan, Honduras tomorrow. Our itinerary is a bit different this week than the normal western cruise. It’s just that Belize and Roatan are swapped; more than likely because of port congestion. It’s going to be a bit rocky tonight, I can tell already. I’m going to do my absolute best to try and write more often this contract. If you feel like I need to write again, email me and I will get on it! J It’s all friendly encouragement.

Hope everyone has a great week!! I’m already enjoying mine even if it is raining outside. Missing everyone but hope to talk to you all soon!!

Smiles,

Alyssa

NYC from the air!

Walking up to KSC

The same bridge they walked onto the moon from!

Atlantis

Launch Pad 39A

VAB

Saturn V Rocket

First time in Grand Turk!

Gentleman getting his head shaved!

Rainy Day in Cozumel

Home in 4 weeks!

June 24^th, 2013

Well hello again from the beautiful Carnival Dream. Time has been flying by partly because it has been so busy around here and my contract has been very broken up for the second half. I’m going to try and update you the best that I can with all that has been going on.

Last time I wrote Auntie and Uncle had just cruised and we had met up in Cozumel. Then we had an extended stay in St. Maarten for 4 days. Nothing too crazy like that has happened since then which is nice, but things are still busy around here. I had the wonderful treat of being granted a work break for a week to go home and surprise my brother and just about everyone else for Kurt’s 21^st Birthday! I couldn’t have asked for a better week. It was just what I needed. I got to see so many of you and make special memories with everyone. I flew home on Saturday night knowing that it was going to be a jam packed week full of fun and lots of go, go, go! I tried to rest up once I landed, but of course after not seeing Mom, Dad, Grama, & Courtney for 3 months we had to catch up some. Sunday morning we got up and went to breakfast with Grama and Grampa, which was delicious! We then headed up to the ballpark with our plan all figured out. Dad was going to drop Mom, Courtney and I off at the ball park then he was going to go pick up Kurt from the bart station and Grama and Grampa who were also surprising him! Dad had it all figured out what trains they needed to be on so they would arrive 6 minutes apart! It worked perfectly! Once Dad picked everyone up at the bart station, he then dropped them off to join Mom in line at the ball park. Courtney and I had went and joined a different line to get into the park so that we could surprise Kurt later once we got into the game. We also made sure that we got to the park early so that we could get the free give away which was a 2012 CHAMPIONSHIP BANNER!! J Looks good up in my cabin by the way! Once Dad parked the car, he joined a different line because he had a different ticket and we didn’t want to give away the secret that Courtney and I were there. Kurt would have known something was up. He already thought Courtney might be surprising him, but when she wasn’t waiting with Mom he kind of gave up... Little did he know! Once we all got into the ball park, Courtney, Dad, and I all met up and waited for Kurt, Mom, Grama, & Grampa to get situated. We knew where they were sitting so we could spy on them! Haha When we saw they were all up there, Courtney and I headed up to surprise everyone! I think Kurt was pretty surprised because what he said to me when he saw me was, “What up girl?” He never says that to me! Haha Love you brother! Of course Grama and Grampa were surprised as well. It still amazes me though that Kurt has a video on his phone that he made a few months back before his birthday that says “ That he thinks there is a 0.001% chance that my sister will come home for my birthday” He just knows me too well. After the game, we all went home and then on Tuesday night Mom and I went up to Sacramento to have drinks with Kurt once he was officially 21! It was a long night but lots of fun! Then Thursday we headed up to the lake to start getting things ready for an amazing weekend!! I was only able to stay about 24 hours, but it was well worth it! It had been so long since I had been to the lake and the fact that I was there to celebrate my brother’s birthday, I couldn’t have asked for much more. As I started my journey back to the ship, I felt so refreshed and thankful that I could have the opportunity to be able to take a week off from my wonderful job to come home and celebrate such a special occasion! Something I will always remember!

As I arrived at the gate for my flight, I found out that my flight was slightly delayed. They were fixing an issue with the plan but said it wouldn’t take too long. I wasn’t too worried until we were delayed about 20 minutes. I then went and asked what they would do about out connecting flights to our final destinations, because I was only given one hour to change planes in Chicago. The lady said they would take care of them, which I was fine with, I just didn’t want to miss getting back on the ship. Well we took off about 30 minutes late and then landed about 40 minutes late. I was in the second to last row of a Boeing 777, which means that there is 2 seats, then 5, then 2 again. I was just hoping my next flight would wait for me and need I remind you that it is 5:30am in Chicago. Once I got off the plane, I literally had to run out of the terminal, underneath the taxi way and back upstairs to the next terminal. Thankfully my next gate was the first one once you got into the terminal and they were waiting for me. They knew my name already. I felt like I had just filmed a scene from a movie! I wasn’t too worried about my bags because I figured they would get them to me and I could just wait at the airport for them if that was the case. I had made my flight and that’s all that I cared about at that point. When I landed back in Orlando, I was quite surprised to find my luggage was the first one on to the belt! I figured since I had 12 minutes to make my next flight, no way would my bag make it, but it did! I ended up making back to the ship safe and sound ready for the rest of my contract!

When I got back on board, everyone was happy to see me and I was happy to see everyone as well. They had made me feel like I had been gone for months and not just one week with all the warm wishes that I had received. Jaime was coming back from vacation on this day as well. She is the cruise director and had been gone the last 6 weeks so it was nice to see her again. Although, I did miss Willie, he was a lot of fun to have around, but I know I’ll be seeing him again sometime. Things weren’t as crazy as I thought they would be with me being gone for one week. Although we were starting to prepare for Gumbie (Assistant Cruise Director) to leave for vacation and his replacement would be here in just a few weeks. We found out that Marcelo was going to be coming to cover for him and he had been here before so it should be pretty easy for him to come in for such a short period of time. Gumbie left in the middle of May as was to be gone 5 weeks. Three weeks into the time Marcelo was here, he got word that he need to go to a different ship and cover as Cruise Director. So he left and Jase took over as ACD for the remainder of time that Gumbie was going to be gone. Those two weeks flew by and Gumbie was back in no time. Part of the reason that those two weeks flew by so fast was because Mom, Dad, and Kurt came to cruise!!! YAY!!!

Well it was an adventure for them to get to the ship and leave for the ship, but we had a really nice time for the week that they were here. They came for an Eastern cruise, that meant that we were going to stop at Nassau, St. Thomas, and St. Maarten. Getting to the ship took them a bit longer than planned. Delays out of San Francisco, caused them to miss their connecting flight in LA that would get them to Orlando. So they sat around for a little bit and ended up having to fly through Dallas on two different flights and then take two different flights again to get from Dallas to Orlando. Mom and Kurt flew together and Dad had to give up his first class seat to fly by himself on different flights than Mom and Kurt. They ended up making it to Orlando about 6 hours later than planned and about an hour apart from each other. All that matters is that they made it to the ship before it set sail! June 1^st was the first day of hurricane season and Mother Nature definitely let everyone know of it. It rained all day! Once they got to the ship, I got them on board extremely fast! Dad liked that after all the hassle of flying. Once we got on board I showed them around a little bit. The lay out of the Dream is very similar to the Glory that Mom and Dad came on last October, and the Freedom that we all went on back in 2011. The only major thing that is different is that Lido is on deck 10 not deck 9. They added an extra deck of cabins to the Dream class ships. Our first port of call was Nassau and we went on a Segway tour! It was a lot of fun! None of us had ever done them before and it was a blast! No one even fell off! The next day was a sea day and we got to take some family photos with Nag one of our professional photographers on board. He is awesome and got some incredible pictures. I’m sure some of you have seen them already because Mom has been toting them everywhere! The day after that we were in St. Thomas and we headed over on a tour to St. John. It was really cool! A bit rocky getting over there, but Mom, Dad, and Kurt were able to snorkel. I’m not a big snorkeler so I just hung out and relaxed. The following day we were in St. Maarten and we went on a really cool island tour and did a bit of shopping. We then had two sea days back to Port Canaveral. I got to eat dinner with them every night so that was a real treat. We went up to the steakhouse and got the special treatment! Overall it was a fantastic week and it was sad to see them leave, but it meant I got to rest up.

For the month of May, I was nominated as team member of the month. I thought they might have the party while Mom, Dad, and Kurt were there, but it happened the following week. I was just honored and humbled to be nominated and felt that I shouldn’t even be in the same room as some of those people. I know I work hard, but everyone else that was nominated works even harder than I do!! It was a true pleasure to be in the same category as the rest of the nominees. I didn’t win, but it was still very cool to be nominated.

Last cruise we had a medical emergency for one of our crew members and had to have him medi-vac’d off the ship. We had to change our route and arrived back in Port Canaveral late Saturday so debark was a bit messier than normal and we left late as well. But we are back in Cozumel today and back on schedule. We also had USPH (United States Public Health) come on Saturday. We have been waiting for them since March and they showed up when we were going to have a mess on our hands already, but we passed with a 100!!!! Perfect score!!! I’m so proud of our entire team and all the senior management for keeping everyone on top of things even when they weren’t showing and we hoped they did.

I now have less than 4 weeks until I’m on vacation! I’m very excited and my body is ready. It’s going to be sad to leave, but I’ll be excited to come back and see everyone again because I’m coming back here for my next contract! I’m extremely ready to see everyone at home though and have some quality lake time!!! J It’s concert season too!!  Hope all is well with everyone at home! See you all in 25 days!!

Smiles! <3 

Busy DREAMin'!!

March 20^th, 2013

Hey all… I’m trying to be better about writing more often and I’ve been given a great opportunity so I’m trying my best to take advantage of it. It is unfortunate the circumstances that it has come about, but I’m enjoying it that’s for sure.

Last time I wrote, Auntie and Uncle were going cruising and we were going to meet up in Cozumel. Well, that has happened and it was an absolute wonderful day. Couldn’t have asked for a better day! After my ship docked, I finished up what I needed to do and headed over to the RC (Royal Caribbean) pier. Our piers are the two closest to each other out of the three total piers in Cozumel. So it took me about 15 minutes, if that, to walk to where we said we would meet up. We then headed to do a little shopping (Shocker!) at some of the local shops. Since Auntie and Uncle cruised on Royal, I had to bring them to spend some money at the Carnival pier! Haha I made sure they got all the good deals though! Then we headed to a restaurant called Three Amigos and ate lunch with a couple of my friends from the Dream, Ben & Rachel. After lunch we headed down town and just walked around a little bit more. Got some sweet new sunglasses for Auntie and I!! After a while we headed back to the ships because their back on board time was earlier than mine. It was awesome to see them though!! Definitely what I needed being a bit homesick still.

Well, the next few weeks were relatively normal until I was host on duty again! We lost two hosts on the 9^th, but we also got two new hosts. It was sad to see Mr. B and Ben go, but excited to see what the two new hosts would bring. We have Jase and Mitch now. I’ve worked with Mitch before while I was on the Freedom last contract so that was nice to see another familiar face. We also had our new musical director sign on, Bryan. I’ve worked with him before too. It’s amazing how many people I know from all the moving around I did last contract!! Well from my last contract I mentioned that there would always be something that would go wrong during my time as HOD (host on duty), whether it was big or small. This time is was big!! If you haven’t seen the news lately, that could be a good thing, but you have probably heard that a few Carnival ships have been having some issues. Well, my ship was one of those. I am currently on the Carnival Dream. We were docked in St. Maarten on Wednesday and experienced an issue while doing some regular testing of our emergency back-up generators. Apparently a fuse was singed and that got repaired but that caused something else to go wrong. Without our emergency generators functioning properly we cannot set sail with guests on board. That caused us to sit in port over night seeing if they could fix the issue, but it was not fixed. Thursday night Carnival had started arranging flights for all the guests to fly out of St. Maarten and they had the CareTeam as well as our debarkation shoreside team from Port Canaveral fly in to help us debark all the guests. We had about 20-25 chartered flights out of St. Maarten, some guests were booked on commercial flights as well. We had about 30 passengers that couldn’t fly so they got booked on other cruise lines that were coming into St. Maarten. As unfortunate as the Triumph situation was, it helped make our process a bit smoother. A lot of people that came to help us also went to help the Triumph. The only difference was that we had one day to organize things and the Triumph had 3 days before the ship got back into port.

It was quite a process to get all the guests off the ship. Guests were required to provide us with information of when their flights out of Orlando were, or if they were driving. From that information the CareTeam booked guests on appropriate flights, but of course nothing could be that easy. Many guests were not booked with their friends that they wanted to fly with or other situations like that. Eventually everyone got off the ship though. It was a long three-day debarkation process. I was up every morning at 3:30 or 4:00am. We were on the gangway all day unless we were up doing an activity. We were rotating all the activities, but if you weren’t on an activity you were down on the gangway guiding and saying good-bye to guests.

We still had our normal plus some special entertainment in the evenings. We got a special surprise and Jon Secada came and performed for us! It was pretty awesome! We were all running around trying to get everything set up for his performance. I had the pleasure of meeting the local guy we hired to come tune the piano for him. I brought him up to lido for some dinner, then we walked around the ship and I learned more about the island of St. Maarten. It was very interesting. Then we had Marcus Anthony the next night. He is an awesome performer as well. He is always around on one of our ships.

The neatest part about this entire experience the past week has been the guests. They have all been so positive about the entire situation. We have never had things be like they said on the news. There was only one toilet that over flowed and that was quickly cleaned up, and one elevator that has been out for weeks already. The guests actually didn’t want to get off the ship! They were loving the fact that they got three days in St. Maarten! The other plus for me was that we got to be in port with the Valor! I got to see Harrison, from my host college and Cassie who was also on the Paradise while I was there. It was a little reunion!

We are now safe and sound back in Port Canaveral. They are working on the issue and we are supposed to sail again on Saturday. I hope everyone is doing well! Baseball season is finally here and March Madness is starting!! Hope everyone enjoys it and I will be watching as much as I can! Hope to talk to you all soon, feel free to contact me whenever you like and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Smiles for all!

Xoxox

-A

Living ON the Dream!

February 27^th, 2013

Well, it has officially been 5 weeks and a little bit since I signed on to the Dream! It has definitely been an experience so far. I’ve been very busy with everything going on here. Between learning the ship and getting to know everyone on board I’ve kept very busy.

I’m going to try and be better this contract about writing more, but as you can see it’s been 5 weeks already since I’ve been here and I’m just getting around to writing. In my defense, the first few weeks are very hectic with lots to do and learn, so I’ll keep working on it. I’m going to get right into things so you don’t feel left out!

Well I’m sure most of you have heard about the fire on board the Triumph. As I am not on that ship, I do have friends that were on that ship. I have heard from them and they are doing just fine. They are waiting to find out where they are going or what they are doing. Supposedly we are having approximately 75 employees sign on to the ship on Saturday that were on the Triumph. Should be very interesting considering we have about 12 new dancers and singers coming on board as well as these 75 other employees and the others that are coming off vacation. We are going to be pressed for space in terms of rooms available, but I’m sure they have it all planned out. I’m so happy that everyone is safe and sound and they are being taken care of. Something like this really makes you think about life on ships. These are extremely safe vessels, but something like that can happen to just about any ship. I’ve heard many different stories where the crew did an incredible job and I’m not surprised at all. I work with so many hard working and caring people that I know it’s the same way across the fleet. We really do work as a family on board and something like that really shows it.

As just about everyone knows, I’ve had my share of time away from home. I love experiencing new things that is pretty obvious; I mean I work on a cruise ship. No day is ever the same. But, I would have to say that this first month has been extremely tough being away from home. Things have become a lot better in this last week, but I still miss my amazing family and friends. I’ve been creating stronger friendships in the last week and I think that has been helping a lot too. Along with time flying by, I’ve been having more fun and focusing on working out more. Keeping a positive mind set and reminding myself of what is important to me is helping me pull through the tough times. I’ve been trying to keep in contact with everyone better so feel free to email me whenever you’d like. I’m always down for a good conversation. I’ve had quite a few great ones in the last few weeks that have helped me stay positive, so thank you to those that know what I’m talking about. I’m also passing the time by counting down the days until my Mom, Dad, & Brother get to come cruise!! It’s down to 93 days just incase you were wondering guys! J And I get to see Auntie & Uncle in less than 1 week!!! Bring on Cozumel!!!

One of my favorite things about my job besides the beautiful places that I get to go is the amazing people that I get to meet. I’ve found some pretty incredible people on this ship. First off is Rachel; she is the show band singer on board. I feel like I have known her forever, we just clicked right off the bat. Super, super nice and we just have a lot of fun together. Then there is Ben; he is another host here on the Dream and he is absolutely hilarious! He is from London and can make just about anyone laugh! He is leaving soon and it will be very hard to say bye to him. Next is Mel & Biz; Mel is a dancer and Biz is her boyfriend and he is one of the BBoys or breakdancers. They are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I can just talk to them whenever and about anything at all. Random, Elie, and Proto are the other Bboys and just plain awesome! All of the Bboys are amazingly talented and they have just awesome hearts and personalities. They are a ton of fun to watch perform and just to hang out with. Michelle is my amazing roommate that is leaving on Saturday! I’m so sad to see her go, but she is ready for vacation. She is super super cool and I’m going to miss her a lot. Joe is another one of the hosts here and he is from England. Again, another awesome guy that is very chill and laid back. He is here basically the same amount of time that I am. He will leave 2 weeks before me in July. Then there are the personal trainers, Keegan and Ben! They are just chill guys that I enjoy hangin out with and they are helping me get in shape! Very thankful for their help. I'm very blessed to have such awesome friendships with all these people!! 

The new cast arrived today so for the next month the dance casts are going to be doing a lot of rehearsals. Jaime is my cruise director. She is absolutely awesome! She has tons of energy and a very very kind heart. Gumbie is my assistant cruise director. Gumbie transferred here just a week or two before I did from the Pride. Also Jaime and Gumbie are going on vacation soon, but they will be back in a few months. Gumbie comes back later than Jaime because he leaves after her. They definitely deserve it though, they were really hard, but then again so do we all!

Last week while we were in Roatan, we were docked with the Conquest so they threw a big party for the crew. Well I decided to go swimming in the ocean, which is a pretty big deal for me… I don’t just walk into the ocean it usually takes me a while to get in, but I walked straight in. It wasn’t very deep and I ended up cutting my toe on a rock. It didn’t hurt too much, but it was still noticeable. I am having a great time and making even more friends. It’s hard at times, but other times I am doing great and forget about the hard stuff. I still can’t believe this is my job. I’m truly blessed. I’m living a dream and living ON the Dream!

Hope all is well with everyone back home… I miss you all and I can’t wait to see you all when I get home.

Smiles, Hugs, & Kisses….