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….

Heading South

I know it has been a while since I posted anything and I’m really sorry about that. I’ve been extremely busy and have less than 1 month before I’m home. Things are only going to get busier I’m sure.

Well the last time that I wrote a blog we were still doing 4 and 5 day runs out of NYC. Since then we have finished those and started with our week long runs. We did 5 of those then relocated to Norfolk, Virginia. Our last two cruises were 4 & 5-day runs and they were pretty normal. Nothing too out of the ordinary happened. We moved on to 7-day cruises and I was on duty for the first one. That meant it was my first time in Maine and I couldn’t check it out. Good thing we were going to be back the next week. With me being on duty, everyone knew something was bound to happen. I think we might have a pretty smooth cruise, just little things here and there. That was a first though. The only thing different about this first 7-day cruise was that we did the run a bit backwards. When we left NYC we first headed to Halifax, then St. John, Portland, then Boston last. When we have a run like this where we head to Canada first, that means the guests have to do some sort of immigration when we first get back into the US. It’s kind of a pain because they will have to do something again when we get back to NYC. Thankfully this was the only cruise that was like that. The other four weeklong cruises went Boston, Portland, St. John, and Halifax. The weather was really nice for most of the month of September. It might be a little chilly here and there and then a bit of rain once in a while but for the most part it was still in the 70s even in Canada.

From my last post I had to wait 34 days for mom and dad to get here! Well they have come and gone now. The have been gone for almost that long now. We had a great week together! It started off the right way by being able to catch some of the K-State game in New York City! We were able to eat together quite a few times and spend lots of time together on and off the ship. I’m pretty sure mom and dad enjoyed it as much as I did. They got to meet some of my friends on the ship. Trevor walked around Boston and some of Portland with us. We didn’t have too much planned in the ports, but Mom decided she wanted to see Peggy’s Cove in Halifax so Bobbi and Emily joined us for that too. It was a gorgeous place and a perfect day for pictures. I was glad that mom made the decision to want to go! We did luck out and were able to spend a few extra hours together because we had a medical emergency and had to return to Halifax the night we left so we were delayed getting into NYC. That morning we were also supposed to drop all the guests off and then head out to Norfolk, Virginia to relocate to our new home port, but our delayed arrival also messed up the arrival of another ship. We were supposed to try and be out of the port by 11 but we didn’t arrive until then, so the other ship had to sit out in harbor until we finished debarking all the guests and loading all the other materials on. Supposedly the ship had traveled all the way from Europe so I felt bad that they had to wait even longer.

When we set sail for Norfolk, it was really neat! It was the first time I had been on board with no guests and let me tell you the nicest thing is being able to wear whatever clothes you want around the ship! I could wear jeans and a sweatshirt!! We were able to walk around where ever we wanted and could take pictures of skyline. It was pretty awesome! And of course you know if there are no guests on board, there is going to be a party! They already had one planned out. Each month different departments are in charge of planning different events for the month. There is usually at least one party in the nightclub, a couple of different food nights, sport activities, karaoke, and sometimes excursions off the ship. It wasn’t too long of a trip down to Norfolk, because we still made it on time the next day into port. I was on port manning the first cruise out of Norfolk, which I didn’t think would be too big of a deal and it wasn’t really. It was so nice to be looking out the windows and seeing crystal blue waters and being able to walk outside to the open deck and wear shorts and not have to have a jacket on. The first day we were in Nassau and it was relatively boring, I bet there weren’t more than 300 people on the ship out of about 3200! I obviously couldn’t get off because I was doing activities all day, but no one showed up to the first 3! I was just walking around the ship entertaining myself. Good thing I’m an entertainment host! J After a while, things started to pick up finally and some people were coming back on board. We were in Nassau overnight so a lot of people went out to the clubs and stuff. I got a nice 7 hours of sleep that night so I could get up and work the next morning! Haha it wasn’t as bad as it sounds until you hear about all the fun you missed out on! Oh, well… It’s not the end of the world. After two days in Nassau, we were in Freeport, which doesn’t look like much right at the port, but I guess there is stuff to do when you get away from the ship; a lot of nice beaches and what not. It’s just another port that I’ll have to check out when we come back next cruise. Oh, also so I’m on duty this cruise and nothing is normal unless something happens right? Well, our dj had a family emergency and had to go home, so that left our host team to dj in the nightclub. It doesn’t sound too hard, I know, and it’s not. It is just really boring and lonely. We all took turns doing it so that the same person didn’t get too lonely too long.

Our next cruise was a 2-day cruise to nowhere, which is basically a big booze cruise. The bar manager was very happy, but was also wishing it was just slightly longer so he could get even more revenue. For this cruise we literally went straight out from Norfolk, turned around and came straight back. The next cruise got a little more interesting. It was planned to be a 6-day cruise, with 3 days in port. Well, I’m sure you all heard about Hurricane Sandy and that’s when she started. Sandy had just formed when we were in Norfolk, so we had one full day at sea then we were supposed to get into Nassau at 11am the following day. We had had another medical emergency and had to go back to Norfolk, so that delayed us getting into Nassau a couple of hours. That was just the beginning though. Instead of staying over night in Nassau like our itinerary said, we stayed 6 hours! We had to head out because the hurricane was heading straight for the Bahamas! Our next port was out of question too because it was Freeport, which is also the Bahamas. We started to head north and thought we could make it to Port Canaveral (Orlando) to make up for port time, but they had closed that port as well due to high winds and potential flooding. I’m not sure why they would do something like that, it’s not like there was a hurricane or anything coming! Haha Well the guests ended up having a 5-day cruise with only 6 hours in port. At first, I think a lot of people were upset, but then started understanding and ultimately just wanted to get off a rocky ship. So, we arrived back a day earlier than we were supposed to, but still many guests thanked us for doing a great job throughout the whole ordeal. After all the guests had gotten off the ship, the crew was not allowed off the ship and we were going to set sail at 6pm to head out to sea. We didn’t have much of a plan of where we were going yet, but it was safer for us out to sea than it was hanging out tied up in port.

So out to sea we went. It was extremely rocky and I just kept thinking, thank goodness there are no guests here, they would have been freaking out. Just about anyone would have been. Most of the crewmembers seemed to handle it all just fine. I thought it was kind of fun haha It was just like a giant roller coaster! I’ll try and put up some pictures so you guys can see what I’m talking about. We would be listing from side to side as well and rolling from front to back. We ended up being at sea for a total of almost 4 days once we dropped everyone off in Norfolk. So that meant that all crewmembers had been on board for at least a solid week with only a couple hours when it wasn’t rocky because we were docked in Norfolk. A solid week of avoiding a hurricane and riding out the waves will really get to you. Everyone was so anxious to get off the ship when we got to Ft. Lauderdale that the line to get off the ship was about 500 people long. We just waited for a while for it to die down so we wouldn’t have to wait too long, I mean by then what is another 20 minutes. We ended up having 2 full days in Ft. Lauderdale until the ship was going to leave for dry dock down in Freeport. Everyone that was at the end of their contracts or vessel transferring to a different ship signed off on different days. Some signed off on the 31^st of October, some on the 1^st of November and the rest on the 2^nd before the ship left for Freeport. Originally they had told everyone they would be signing off on either the 31^st or the 1^st, but we quickly figured out that it could be the 2^nd too. I signed off the 2^nd. Even with no guests on board we still had to do port manning. I volunteered to do it the first night and that ended up kind of kicking me in the butt. Everyone went out and had a great time since it was Halloween and I was on board bored out of my mind. I was just walking around the ship because I didn’t want to be stuck in my room. At that time the ship was already in dry dock mode. That means that all the glass and windows get covered with cardboard, the floors covered with cardboard as well. Basically anything that can be damaged in any way shape or form gets covered. It also means that you can’t do anything on the ship. Everything is shut up and blocked off or covered. Also for dry dock they only keep so many of each department on the ship so I was chosen to vessel transfer and then come back.

Well the next day I was able to get off the ship and grab some lunch and dinner. We also went out to get drinks with a group from the ship. It was a really fun last night with everyone. Since I didn’t sign off until the 2^nd, I got to meet our new ACD (Assistant Cruise Director) Eversen. He signed on on the 1^st so it was nice to be able to meet him before I came back to the ship after dry dock.

Well I’m currently on the Freedom, but only for a few more days and then I will fly back to Miami and get on the Glory on Thursday!! The team here is absolutely awesome! I’ve gone from an all girl host team on the Glory to an all guy team here on the Freedom. They are all great guys and it’s going to be sad to leave them even after only 10 days. I’ve been able to go to some different places than the Glory will go to. I actually just finished a run that Mom, Dad, Kurt and I did back in 2010. I was in St. Thomas, Antigua, Tortola, and Nassau. Yesterday I was in Ft. Lauderdale and today I’m in Key West. Tomorrow is a sea day and then Wednesday I will sign off in Grand Cayman and fly to Miami to stay over night. It’s times like this where I sit here and think about all I have done and the things I’m going to do in the next few days that I can’t believe this is my life!! I’m getting paid to go to these amazing places!!

Well, again I apologize it has been so long since I wrote last. I hope everyone is doing great! Feel free to shoot me an email or call me whenever, I love hearing from everyone. I'm going to try and put together a slide show for when I come home so I can show you guys more pictures and videos. I’ll be home soon to see everyone! Miss you all!

Love and Smiles!

These are some pictures from when Mom and Dad came cruising! This is Peggy's Cove in Halifax

Dad, Mom and I in Boston!

Bobbi, Me and Emily at Peggy's Cove

Me, Dad and Mom again

 My awesome girls!! Lolly, Bobbi, and Laura!! The best host team EVER!!!

 Hurricane Sandy! 

 The atrium covered already

 Me, Laura, Lolly, Bobbi, and Matt all dressed up for the Halloween party!

 Leaving New York!!