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....

setting records...

i have been averaging about 4 dinners per night. And i might be in the Guinness Book of Carnival Records for most calories consumed in the first two weeks of a contract. There is just so much food at all hours of the day and night, plus rad desserts that its hard to resist. Plus, i may have one of the absolute easiest jobs on the whole ship, which has the most free time... what else am i going to do. Yep all those 17 pounds i lost to get ready for the beaches may be back on already....

I was talking to the ship magician (yep every carnival ship has a magician...) and another cook from India who had just got done with his 16 hour work day, and was just having his dinner at about 1am. He asked me what time i had my dinner...... i said, "5pm, 6pm, 8pm, 10pm, and 1am." I am setting records and am quite famous for pigging out. Last night there was ribs again in the crew mess hall that they brought down from upstairs on level 9 "lido deck" where the guests eat. (staff can eat there most breakfasts and lunches at certain hours as well....). So i had a simple low-cal 4th dinner of 3 ribs, a slice of pepperoni pizza, two bowls of fries, one piece of chocolate pie, a half slice of chocolate cake (i had to at least try it out...) chicken with some sort of asian glaze on it, plus a pear for health.

zero to obese: one contract.... oh yeah baby ;)

"port manning"

i have port manning this week.... meaning i cant leave the ship on the port days. on this 7 day cruise that i am repeating 13 times in 3 months, we stop at 4 ports:

Grand Cayman
Roatan Island off of Honduras
Cozemel, and
Belize

i am glad that i checked out each one the first week, because of being stuck this week... for instance, i went against the advice of Carnival and rented a scooter in Cozemel and rode around the coast of the island. That was fun, except the first scooter i had broke down about 20 minutes out of town. Luckily a police type truck pulled right over and gave my scooter and i a ride back to the place i got it. i wasnt going to rent one but after walking a ways where you first get off the ship, after about a thousand people asked me if i wanted to rent one, i just said fine, if you do it for 15 bucks, which i heard a girl say she rented one for... The second scooter worked fine and it was fun.. i finally made it to "playa bonita" which the scooter guy said was cool....

i have been averaging about 3-5 dinners per night, and have most likely gained back the weight i lost in the last few months trying to get ready for "the beaches".. The white sanded 7 mile beach in grand cayman really was cool...

i hope to upload pictures soon somehow, but it may mean buying a laptop and having it shipped first....

tons of nationalities

my friend the bass player puts the nationalities on the crew and staff in this order:

1) Philippines
2) Russia
3) Indonesia
4) Thailand
5) Italian

The only Americans are in the entertainment department and there are only a handful. Even the people you think are americans turn out to be canadians....... And yes, they all sit in their own tables in the crew mess hall speaking their own languages during dinner, and no i cant understand a word of it unless its spanish......