June 4. 2011
“Whatever Floats Your Boat”
As most of you know, I’m currently working for Carnival Cruise lines on the ship, Ecstasy. We started on April 21st and will work until the boat will be “dry docked” for maintenance on September 8th. Even though we started a month ago, I wanted to wait a little while to write my first blog entry so I could “settle in” and have a full perspective of all the adjustments this adventure would require. After sitting here dreaming up what I think some of you would be curious to know and also after receiving suggestions from you, today I’d like to share with you the following:
Where are we traveling to? We are currently touring the Western Caribbean. The ships schedule is 5 day cruise, 5 day cruise and then a 4 day cruise. Cozumel is my favorite port.
What are the rooms like? Small. The rooms are small. The best way I can describe what it’s like living in the crew rooms is similar to RV quarters. The beds are twin size beds. The bathroom, shower and sink are all-in-one. When I shower, the stupid shower curtain sticks to my elbow. Yea, it’s that kind of small space. Lol. The crew decks are significantly different than guest areas. Passengers have pretty colored carpet and walls and ours literally looks stiff with cream and beige paint straight out of the movie Titanic. By the way, they play the 3 hour nightmare on TV all the time, which should be illegal when working on board. Just saying. We have big closets, shelves and drawers to organize our stuff. We also have a steward that cleans our room every day. By clean, I mean make our bed, give us new towels, sweep and run a sponge over the bathroom, etc. At first it didn’t seem like much, but it is nice to come back to a clean room. But I DID buy my own cleaning supplies and give it a good scrub myself just to be safe. This ship is one of the oldest in the Carnival fleet so our crew rooms are a little old, but they’re free and they become “home” after a few days.
Is the food any good? Our band is considered “Staff” so we actually get what they call guest privileges, which means we can go anywhere on the ship as long as we are dressed appropriately. When we are around guests, they don’t want us dressed like a slum which is totally understandable. So as far as food, we can eat in guest areas, but they have certain times of the day they prefer us to eat at the guest dining halls. Guest areas usually always have good food. We also have what they call a “Crew Mess and Staff Mess” which is basically a cafeteria for the workers. They give a good variety of stuff, sometimes it’s yummy and sometimes it’s awful! They ALWAYS have ten different kinds of dessert, which is the hardest thing for me to resist. Having frozen yogurt, cheesecake and any other sweets you can imagine always available for the picking is torture!! Luckily we have a gym! J
How often do we work and what is your free time like? We work a few hours most nights, commonly 8:30pm till 12:30ish, including breaks. Since we only work nights, this leaves our days free to enjoy our surroundings. We have what is called “Sea Days” and “Port Days”. Sea days are when we are traveling on the sea all day. Port days are when we are docked and are able to get off the boat and explore paradise! During sea days, I spend my time working out in the gym, playing guitar, reading books, songwriting and writing blogs such as this one, etc. I have a long list of goals that I set for myself during this time away and I use my free time on sea days to try and accomplish these. During port days, we like to get off the boat and explore the port we are in. Sometimes we’ll just walk around and soak up the sun and the culture and sometimes we’ll do a guest excursion and go snorkeling and such. I know that Progresso has a Mayan Ruin excursion that I’d like to do because I’m told it’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World! They also have some excursions where we can learn to cook salsa dishes and learn to salsa dance with the natives!! Ha-ha. You KNOW I will try this out eventually! Also most of the crew usually brings there computers into the ports and finds a free Wi-Fi hotspot to catch up with friends and family. We also usually eat lunch off the boat and take advantage of eating something different.
Is it good money and what do we pay for? The money is very good, yes. I would never consider being away from my family, friends and music city if it wasn’t worth it. This is a great experience to save money and make new fans and friends. We don’t pay for anything on board except alcohol, spa services and items from the gift shop, etc. But we do get a crew discount on everything which is great. We also have to pay for internet which is a HUGE bummer!! We were not aware of this and this has been the biggest adjustment for all of us. But this is why we mostly use the internet when we are in port and it’s free.
What are the people like? The people all in all are great. Of course it’s like anywhere else and we have some people who aren’t so nice, but mostly everyone is very welcoming. As far as crew and staff, there are very few Americans, but it’s very cool actually. When sitting down at a table, you usually have a mixture of people from South Africa, Russia, England, Australia and many, many more!! Some of them I have never even heard of! As a matter of fact, right now as I’m typing this blog, there is a group of people speaking a different language right next to me…I have NO idea what they are saying and I have no idea what language it is! LOL. But it’s great! I LOVE culture and this is a lot all at once. Sometimes it’s hard to understand what someone is saying to you, but eventually your brain gets use to processing someone’s accent. Everyone on board has to speak English so that’s convenient to us few who don’t speak several languages.
How do you do general errands? We run most of our errands once a week, every week, in Galveston, TX. They have a post office, library, CVS and things like that. We can also take a shuttle to the Wal-Mart, Target or the mall. We don’t have to grocery shop so most errands are to the post office or to get sunscreen or things we don’t need, but we want….such as new clothes. Haha. They also have a medical center on board which is available to us at no cost. I’m actually just now getting over being sick so I’ve been in and out of there for the past few days. No fun.
What’s the best part? The worst? The best part for me, first and foremost, is the opportunity to meet new people and share my music with them! I have already met so many great folks, that I know will be friends and music followers for a long time. They make this experience fun for us! The second is the chance to save money. We don’t have much, if any, expenses on board so the money we make is available for saving! And of course the chance to travel and spend every week at a beach or on a shore excursion helps! Haha. Also, I think it’s a little beneficial to get away from the “real world” for a little while. It allows a brief break from reality and lets the body & mind recharge so-to-speak. It feels somewhat like we are on the outside looking in and now we can access areas of our life’s that were harder to see clearly while living in it. It’s so easy to get caught up in trying to master the business side of the music business and this experience is helping me get back to what really matters…..the music.
The worst part is by far being away from family and friends. Living in Nashville also prevents me from seeing my family, but at least I could hop in a car and drive home for the weekend if I wanted to. In this case, I have to wait for them to get free time to come visit. Secondly, the internet and telephone usage is obviously WAY less than on land so it has been a huge adjustment for us. In fact I only use my cell phone once a week. But I don’t really think that’s a horrible thing. As frustrating as it can be…it’s kind of nice to realize again what life was like without cell phones and Facebook. Lol. As mentioned above, the food in the staff mess can be disappointing. We are exposed to more germs because we come across so many new people all the time…shaking hands, taking pictures, talking closely so we don’t shout over the music, etc. This is probably why I have already got sick once. I’m sure my body will need to adjust to the new environment. I’ve been taking lots of vitamin C.RANDOM:
P.S. A girl went missing last night on the boat. They were searching every cabin including crew last night at 7am. They even brought fliers with her picture on it. They found her passed out from getting obliterated in someone else’s room. She never answered any of the pages of the intercom. Wow. They were kicked off the boat. And it’s not the first time we’ve seen that happen. Yikes!! Ya got to be somewhat responsible people. Haha.---Well I’m sure there is plenty more that I can say, but I think this in fine for now. I welcome comments and questions. Talk to you soon.
Xoxo, Katie
