On to the GLORY!!

As I sit here writing, I’m people watching at the Newark airport with the beautiful skyline of New York City behind me. I wish I had time to go to the city, but I don’t and I’ll be back in just over a month. Yes, I said I’ll be back in a month!! I found out that I am going to be on the Carnival Glory. The Glory is currently based out of Boston with 4 and 5 day cruises to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In August, the homeport will switch to NYC while continuing to go to Canada. I’m excited I get to spend my birthday in New York!! Haha then October we will move down to Virginia and start heading to the Bahamas. November, we will have the first two weeks in dry dock as we get ready to roll out Fun Ship 2.0. It’s a huge roll out fleet wide that is taking several years to do so I’m excited that I get to be on a ship during a roll out. Now, I don’t know if it’s guaranteed that I’ll stay on during the dry dock or not yet, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon. After the dry dock, we head on down to Miami and keep heading to the Bahamas throughout the winter months. I’m very excited about my ship and my itineraries as they are always changing and really going to keep me on my toes. If you want to book a cruise to come see me on the Glory, you can go to carnival.com and specifically select the Glory and I also suggest selecting the date range of July 2012- December 2012 so that you get the right itineraries up.

Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been incredible and very busy all at the same time. The four of us “chickens” as they called us got so very close that it was hard to leave everyone yesterday. We had been doing all kinds of things all over the ship, like deck parties, trivia, game show mania, watching the production shows, debark and tender dispatch, and bingo. We also had to cover karaoke for a couple of nights because the host was sick. I lost my voice doing that because when your shift is just getting started you need to have someone singing to try and attract people into the lounge so I had to sing a few songs. I think I’m going to keep my other job because I’m definitely better at that!

As the last few days of our training were going by we were definitely trying to take advantage of the time that we could spend with the rest of the crew. Everyone was so sweet and welcoming to us that we had created some amazing bonds already and knew it was going to be hard to leave. We had a big group go out for lunch when we had our last day in Cozumel. That was a lot of fun. Also the week before we had the chance to go on a crew only excursion and we got to go to a beach and just hang out for a couple of hours. It was amazing!! The unlimited beer and margaritas didn’t hurt either! J I still can’t believe that this is the life I’m living!

I have gotten to know our break dancers on board pretty well and they found out that I love to take pictures so we got together and had a couple of photo shoots. It was an absolute blast and with the theater as a gorgeous backdrop we were able to create some amazing images. Some of them made me wish that I had more equipment because I know I could create even more awesome shots, but with what I had it was really good.

We also had a nice graduation from our college. At our graduation we received our daily uniforms, before that we were wearing a white team member shirt with khaki shorts (Not the most attractive thing I've worn). We also got our ship assignments at the ceremony so it was an exciting afternoon!

Well now as I wrap up this shorter post, I’m in a hotel room in Newark, NJ. I never made it to Canada. I was going to be late and wouldn’t have made the ship in time so I got off my flight and got my bags off and then went about changing my plans. I will now meet my ship tomorrow in Boston! With that I have the day off today to go and explore NYC!!! I’m really excited!! I’ll have some more pictures for you guys later, but until then here are a few.

 This is Dustin, Cathy, and Harrison. We all grew extremely close and will be friends for the rest of our lives. 

 At our graduation we got our ship assignments and our "blues" which are our every day uniforms.

 This is Ivan, he is one of the break dancers on the ship and we wanted to do a photo shoot together and this is just one of the awesome shots we created together.

 This is Randy, he is the other break dancer on board and we got some amazing shots as well. It was a blast working with these guys! 

 This is the beach that we got to go to with the crew. It was a beautiful day and I couldn't have asked for more!! Anyone care to join me next time??