July 8th – Getting in the Groove

It’s been a couple days now, but it feels waaaaay longer.  I’m now completely confident navigating between my room, the mess hall, our training rooms, and our work areas.  I even found the gym this morning with my roommate, Mel!

In addition to all the basic trainings that we’ve had this weekend, we’ve also begun training for our specific jobs.  Yesterday we received our costumes, and now we’ll be wearing them every day for the rest of our contracts.  The good news is that we don’t ever have to wash our own costumes – we just drop them off at the wardrobe department and then pick up new ones.  The bad news is that they still look atrocious.

Today was the first time that we got to work on the floors on the Youth Activities centers.  My department consists of both the Oceaneer Club (3-7 years old) and the Oceaneer Lab (8-13), which both have quite a few different rooms/areas, including Pixie Hollow, Andy’s Room and Animator’s Palace.  There’s also a stage area where we host programs such as Storytime, where Characters come visit the kids.  While working the floors this evening, I got to help host a playdough craft, I participated in our Cinderella storytime, and finished the night helping kids make their very own Mr. Potato Heads in Andy’s Room.  The best part of Andy’s Room is a door we have that leads into crew quarters (of course, the kids don’t know this).  Instead, we tell them that that’s where Foo the Closet Monster lives.  But Foo is allergic to kids and that is why the door is locked, because he doesn’t want to get sick.  The kids can then knock on the door and Foo will knock back to them (as crew members pass by), or they can ask him questions by passing paper under the door for him to answer.  It’s super cute.

Today we were docked in Grand Cayman.  We didn’t have any free time to get off the boat, but we did go up onto the crew sun deck to get a view of the gorgeous water.  It’s beautiful.  Tomorrow we’ll be arriving in Costa Maya, where the other YACs and I should be able to get off and go visit for a bit during the afternoon, which should be super fun.

Speaking of fun, beers at the crew bar cost $0.85.  That’s 85 CENTS! Yup.

Last night we went to a crew party on the crew sun deck (which is on deck 14, the highest deck, at the very back of the ship).  It was quite fun, even though we really just hung out with our Traditions group.  Most of my night was spent explaining to Christopher why American beer tastes like piss waster and then comparing different word pronunciations.  We have a really great Traditions group.  Everyone is super friendly and we all get along well.  Although our schedules are soon going to get incredibly crazy (and totally different from one another), we’re hoping to arrange some kind of weekly standing breakfast/lunch/or dinner date with everyone.

Okie dokie, that’s all for now.  Smell ya later!