Arrived and Settled!

First adventures!  Written Sunday afternoon, local time, while docked in Juneau.

So I’ve now been on the ship almost 3 whole days.  I can hardly believe it – of course, Saturday barely counts because although I was on the ship by 8am, we didn’t set sail until 5pm.

But let’s start mostly at the beginning, shall we?

Not quite though as I need a mild declaimer first:

a)    1)  Ship board internet is done through a satellite connection – only way possible.  This does mean, however, that internet is SLOW and periodically decides it just doesn’t like us and so screw you (this is not the satellite’s fault.  It would be the fault of the absolutely gorgeous fjords and glaciers we visit.  I can’t say as I can really blame them.  They want people staring at them, not screens).

b)    2)  We have to pay for internet.  Yes, talk about a racket, right? (more on this later!)  It’s $40 for 7.5 hours of slow ‘net time and $20 for like 200 minutes.  Granted, this is a lot better than the poor guests who pay something like $100 for 200 minutes.  Sucks to be them!

Because of these two factors, my internet time will be severely limited.  Not sure I’ll ever be on AIM and if I am, it will probably be horrendously inconvenient times (I’m an hour even behind PST for most of the week), at least until parts of the Caribbean cruise.  This also means most, if not all, of these blog posts are done offline and then copy/pasted when I’m on.  Hopefully Starbucks in Vancouver will be my savior for posting pictures and the like.

That being said, I’m hoping to log on to check e-mail/facebook/LJ/some combination at least once a day so e-mail is a great way to reach me.  If you don’t have it, leave me a comment here and I’ll get it to you!

Now we can get to the beginning!

So I arrived at Albany International (I feel I should call it that as I actually used it for that purpose for once) around 9:30am Friday morning.  Almost got messed up because of a jerk who was taking up one of the two Air Canada places for a Continental problem.  I won’t go into it but she was…not used to the answer no, obviously.  Anyway, I got through and my plane finally arrived – a little 18-seater turboprop with two seats in each row, no overhead compartments and you could see right into the cockpit with your pilots.  We made it into Toronto about a half hour late.

Now.  For those of you who have not traveled through Toronto airport (I would guess the majority of you), don’t hurry to do so.  It sucked.  First, I had to walk literally a mile or more to get from where I arrived to where I departed.  Then, I had to a) go through customs, b) retrieve my bag, c) walk another half mile, d) redeposit my bag, e) go through f’ing security again, in which they took my brand new water bottle from the last airport, f) find my gate in all the confusion.

All of these caused me to walk up just as boarding started, despite an hour and a half planned layover, so I go no food (= sad puppy).  So we get on the plane and I have a decent seat – window, right behind the first class but stuck next to two Oriental (is that the PC term these days?) men who didn’t speak a lick of English, which made potty breaks a pain.  We sit and we sit and we sit and finally it turns out that oops, broken engine and no other way to get out!  So we sit some more as they start to fiddle with it.  By now, it’s approaching 4pm and we’ve been sitting on the plane for over an hour (original flight at 2), so I go ask if I can get food as I’m dying from lack thereof.  Finally, they agree and throw us all off the plane, with $10 vouchers for one of the food places.  After another TWO plus hours, we finally got to reboard.  Luckily I made friends with a very nice woman from Michigan and her 8ish year old daughter and we chatted and shared food for the two hours.  Then we reboarded and spent another almost hour waiting for a push back team and take off.  So FIVE hours after our original takeoff time, we finally do.  Which, is exactly when we should have been landing in Vancouver.

The flight itself was uneventful.  I was on high stress alert so I pretty much watched kids movies (highly recommend both Rango and Megamind, fyi) the entire way.  We landed in Vancouver, had to wait again for a landing crew since we were 5 hours late, and finally deplaned.  Luggage was fairly timely and luckily my hotel was a) attached to the airport and b) guaranteed my plane even if I was late, which I was, obviously.

It was a very nice hotel!  Quite fancy actually.  The kitchen was still open so I figured I should eat something but only managed two chicken wings (this at 1am my body’s time so I was really just needed sleep), but the awesome waitress refused to let me pay for it and gave me this super sweet peptalk.  She is one of my new favorite people.  I crawled back to my room and into bed, but was awake at 2:30am scared to death.  I’ll admit it.  Not one of my finer moments but typical of me and last minute panic.  To be honest, I’m surprised I lasted that long before a break down!  So I did what any person would really do and called my mommy (at 5:30am her time.  So sorry, Mom!) and got another peptalk that actually worked.  I’m one of those people that needs an escape clause even if I never end up using it and she provided it for me.  Best.  Mother.  EVER.  Just fyi.

I got a few more hours of dozing and was up at 5:30 to discover my shower wouldn’t get warm.  After a lot of fiddling, swearing and borderline crying, I realized that the Hot and Cold sides were backwards.  D’oh.   Then I went down, got my pathetic free breakfast and got myself checked in with the bus to come to the ship.  It all went surprisingly smoothly on my end and I quickly discovered out of the 21 new crew there in the morning, I was one of 2 Americans.  Whew, talk about a minority.

We made it to and boarded the boat, getting some real basic instruction and filling out a bunch of paperwork.  Then I got to meet Shane, the cruise director, who is apparently super awesome (and I discovered very quickly that he has a good sense of humor) and Diana, who I’m replacing and who has been on this ship for EIGHT months.  Yes, since January.  I think I’d kill myself, but kudos to her, man.  Diana, I quickly discovered, is awesome.  I haven’t asked her age but I’d say a few years my senior and she has 4.5 years of experience on ships and she’s been really awesome about showing me around and introducing me to people.  We opened the library (which actually literally involves opening the bookshelves, as they are gated to both prevent stealing and to keep them on the shelves in case of rough seas) and then had lunch outside on the deck.  It was a gorgeous day in Vancouver and I hope it’s as nice this Saturday when we’re back.

I am a Traffic Director, which means in case of a general emergency/abandon ship order, I get to stand by one of the banks of elevators and direct people to the deck below me where all the liferafts/boats are located.  I also get to wear my lovely bulky lifevest and an even more gorgeous vest that says Traffic Director.  I will be sure to get and post a picture of me in my finery – I have yet to receive my vest.  This also meant that before I even had my head screwed on, I got to play TD and try and direct people.  I think we all failed :P

Needless to say, by the time 10pm and closing time at the library rolled around, I was dead on my feet.  I finally met my roommate, Julia, late that afternoon and found out that, sadly, she’s only here through Saturday, because she seems pretty awesome as well.  She is one of the Club HAL girls, meaning she works with kids all day, so we really just pass in the night – I’ve seen her 4 times since I got on board 2.5 days ago.  Not sure yet if I will be getting a new roommate or not, both seem equally likely at this moment.  Either way, it means I get the bottom bunk and don’t have to ungracefully flop myself onto the top ladderless bunk.

I slept really poorly Saturday night between the rocking – this boat rocks more than I was expecting – and all the noises down here in the crew quarters.  Not to mention that about 5:30am, we hit some pretty nasty swells so at 6, I gave up and went upstairs, got myself some Cheerios and tea (I’m becoming a tea junky for realz) and watched the world go by in the dining room.  One thing Diana quickly explained to me was that I can go pretty much anywhere on the boat and use any of the services, even those that are paid for a reduced price.  That’s pretty freakin’ awesome and means I get to eat at the self-serve restaurant up on the 9^th floor rather than the crew mess down here on A Deck. (there are 14 decks total on the ship – 4 crew: A, B, C, D (lowest) and then 10 passenger decks with the library on 10).  I can also use the gym, pools, sit in the comfy chairs, etc.

By 11am Saturday morning, I pretty much knew the entire library and could operate it.  More on the library at a later date (when I’ve run out of fun adventures to tell).  I’ve had a bunch of training the last two days and had to fill out enough paperwork to make someone go mad, but I feel I’m finally reaching the end.  However, we still shared all the hours, even if Diana mostly chatted with Gabriela (the Internet Manager and other staff in the library) while I did the library work and was available for questions if I needed them (yay training!).  Good news is that I can both read and write while working!  So hopefully that equates to lots of writing times and lots of good books absorbed.  I had a wonderful chat last night for like an hour with the nicest couple from Hampshire, England.  It was super interesting and completely what’ll make this job worthwhile!

Last night, I made it until about 11:30pm before crashing, but we turned the clocks back so I still felt a bit silly going to bed.  However, after all the stress and two nights of crappy sleep, I was dead on my feet.  Slept like a long last night for 9 hours and feel SO much better!

Anyway, this is three pages long so I’m going to leave it there (and my battery is dying, need to plug the sucker in) and I’ll post again in a day or two with today’s adventures (or lack thereof) and the rest of the time until I can get that written up.

Please feel free to comment!