Costa Maya

Occasionally the ship goes a different route for a week.  This last week went to all the ports in the opposite order and instead of Roatan Island went to Costa Maya in Mexico...  heres a quick pic.  i should have taken one in downtown on the beach too because it was very cool.........

basketball

my new hobby on the ship is playing basketball on the top deck.   its a heck of a lot more fun than running on the treadmill which is extremely monotonous and painful...  i always get inspired to write cool stuff but dont have internet handy.  then when i get to a port with free internet im not inspired anymore.  so hopefully ill time it right soon...  ;)  right now im in miami.  heres a picture of a few other cruise ships.  At any given port you can find several cruise ships from different companies parked out at sea a bit or at the docks if there is one....

Mason's Video

For those that haven't seen it, Mason has a cool video of him walking around the ship on his Facebook page. You'll have to have a Facebook account to see it, though.

schedule

we depart miami every Sunday afternoon at about 4:30 pm after a boat drill where i have stand at "muster station f" and occasionally demonstrate to guests how to put on a life jacket....  We then sail Sunday night and all Monday, which is one of the two "sea days," until we arrive in Grand Cayman on Tuesday morning.  After a full day in Grand Cayman we sail that evening and arrive in Roatan Island off of Honduras at about 12pm on Wednesday.  We sail from Roatan that night and arrive at Belize Thursday morning.  There is a 25 minute ride in a tender to get to Belize, as we park the ship a few miles from shore.  We leave Belize Thursday night and arrive in Cozumel Friday morning.  Then we leave Cozumel and have another sea day on saturday before returning to Miami Sunday morning.  The schedule repeats for my 13 weeks. 

heres my music schedule:

Sunday:  Intro show with comedian 10:30pm

Monday:  5-6pm jazz set by the casino for "formal night".  7 and 8:45 shows ("Night Club Express) and   late night jazz set in the "Winston Cigar Bar"

Tuesday:  2 shows (7 and 8:45pm) of juggler followed by a comedian

Wednesday: off.....   ;)

Thursday:  2 show (7 and 8:45pm) of the singers and dancers' favorite show:  "Far from over" which is highlights from the 80s....   lots of synth stuff for me....

Friday:  typically a Comedian with 2 shows at 7 and 9pm.  Although this week we had a "fly on" Motown act that we had a rehearsal for at 3:30 pm

Saturday:  8pm country show featuring our lead dancer guy.  Its actually a cool show and get two piano solos, one with just me and the singer and the spotlight is on me.  I even have to take a bow when its done...  then there is the "Carnival Legends" show at 10:30 where different guests that have won the karoake contest get to perform and dress up as different famous singers.  This week "Frank Sinatra" was the best.  Last week it was garth brooks.  This is a fun show.

rescue

the ship stopped mysteriously last night a couple hours after we left Cozumel.  No one knew what was happening as we seemed to be turning around.  I went to deck 7 forward (right below the captains lookout) which has the best view.  We had turned around and were moving very slowly.  Both spotlights were shining semi-frantically and i thought oh no! someone had fell off the ship....  There is a code for this that employess learn, its called "bravo bravo."  I never heard this code, but still it seemed thats what was going on.  I saw where there light was shining and didnt see a distinct person anywhere.  But then someone else watching by me pointed out a small flashing light in the distance..  and then i realized there was a boat...  A small boat had capsized and i found out later this man was in bad shape.  He probably would not have survived much longer..  unfortunately my 8pm show was starting in the Ivanhoe Theater so i couldnt watch the rescue boat go out and retrieve the guy....  dang it!  here is picture of the stormy waters that night....

grand cayman

walked the whole 7 mile beach of grand cayman today.....  They say the weather here is pretty much the same year-round...  except winter is a little nicer because there is more of a breeze.....   Grand Cayman is a British territory and walking around the streets keeps throwing me off... i almost get hit every time because of the cars coming from the wrong direction on each side of the street...  :(

i took the first "tender" this morning and left the ship at around 7:30am so i have all day to walk the whole "7 mile beach" where "The Firm" was filmed...   The library here has free internet and computers..  I hope this will be my last boring post without pictures because i have nearly solved the internet/computer/phone/uploading pictures dillema...

phone woes

all the pictures i have taken so far with my motorolla phone are untransferable to any computer i have attempted to use... thus i am switching to my old phone which i luckily brought along..... i just took a couple pictures of the internet place in miami... woohoo how exciting that i will try to upload and see if it works....