Stuck In An Elevator!!!

Sooo I got stuck in an elevator the other day...it was quite exciting! haha. Luckily they have a call button inside the elevator and they answered immediately. The whole shebang lasted about 10 mins. Did I mention I was suppose to be on stage and had no way to tell my band that I was stuck! haha. I got some pretty evil looks when I walked into the club 10 mins after we were suppose to start playing! LOL. They forgave me.

When I had the idea of starting this blog, I wanted to make sure that I posted the "not-so-fun" moments of my life just as I did the good. I want it to me more realistic/in-depth than just posting updates on facebook. So the lastest "not-so-good" moment... As most of you know I'm singing for Carnival Cruiselines at the moment. My days are free time, but at night I am singing 3,4,5 hours!! It's ALOT. Not only does shiplife include long hours, but it includes coming in contact with much more germs than we normally would. We are seeing thousands of new people each week. We also deal with dust that has built up over the course of the ships' life, but there are some cracks you just can't get into to clean very well or they choose not too. The dust and dry air causes everyone to have sinus issues. Anyhow...lately after singing/talking for a little period of time, I have been experiencing a very odd ache/burning sensation on the left side throat and on the under side of my chin. The doctors on the ship can't see that far down my throat so they decided to send me to an ENT (Ear, nose and throat) doctor.

The van came and picked me up and we were off to the the doctor. Upon arriving and discussing my symptoms, they decided to scope me (AKA stick and tube up my nose and down my throat). YAY. So fun---sarcasm. The worst part was the substances they sprayed in my nose to numb it. YUCK!! I guess it was worth it! haha. So the verdict????  Acid Reflux & Allergies. It had got so bad that it was causing my vocal chords to inflame. Good news??? No nodules and we got an answer!!

My days now consist of Nexuim twice a day, Fluconase twice a day, and Singular at night! haha. Today is the first day I think I can tell a difference so that is exciting!

PS. My CD's are finally in the mail. Been a long process, but I will have them soon!

Hope all is well in your world.
Peace, Love and Pineapples.
-Katie A.

"Weren't You On The Last Cruise?"

July 2, 2011
Weren't You On The Last Cruise?

So I've been reading a book and the writer states that bloggers should blog everyday....oops!

Everyone is starting to look the same! All the friendly faces are starting to run together and I'll forget if we're on a 5 day or 4 day cruise and if we've switched passengers yet! I've also accumulated a cruise life sense of being "lost in travel" when talking about the days of the week ...all the staff, including
myself, talk in days of cruise rather than days of the week. Instead of saying "let's hang out on Friday or Monday", like we normally would... we speak in "cruise days" such as "next Progreso" or "Hey, let's go Scuba diving two Cozumels from now!". So lately, I never know what day it actually is at the moment.

We did have two familiar faces on this last cruise that I could never ever get mixed up....My parents!! It was their first time on a cruise so we spent the first day or two trying to help them adjust to how everything works and showing them where everything on the ship was located. And sure enough, we haven't seen rain for 2 months and it decided to rain BOTH days in port. But we tried to make the best of it! On the first port day, we got off in Progreso and took them to a little hole in the wall taco place. I don't even know the name of it...or if it even has a name for that matter. They have $1 tacos and they are GREAT!! Totally legit. It's one of our favorite places to eat and we usually go there every week!
And we also had "real" Coca  Cola...apparently Mexico is the only place that still uses real sugar in it. I couldn't really tell a difference, but Randy swears by it. I guess I'm not a good critic of the stuff because I don't drink it usually anyway. But I have noticed that all the straws in Mexico FLOAT to the top of the glass. Next time you're here and you get a soda...watch your straw. LOL.
(Random Note-- The intercom totally just paged Mel Gibson...surely it's not THE Mel Gibson. Just sayin.)

After we had our yummy tacos we walked around the block to get some sort of dessert. My mom was on a mission to find a pastry, but we never ran into a pastry shop. We did ,however, pass a popsicle stand AKA Ice Lollies. Didn't sound to interesting so we went to a tiny frozen yogurt place. My dad and I got coconut flavored and it was the BEST!!! I wonder if I was extra hungry that day and it made everything taste better. haha. Or maybe it was because family was with me. Nah....it really was a fantastic dessert. Again...I don't know the name of the place. I will probably make it a regular spot to eat as well so I'll let you know if I find out what it's called.

The next port day was Cozumel. We took a taxi to a popular crew hang out called "La Choza". Spelling?. I had kept hearing about how amazing the food was so I wanted to try it. The cheeze sauce and guacamole was pretty good, but I wasn't blown away with my entree. Everyone else liked their food so I may have to try it again and get a different dish. We had three nice amigos come play us a happy song while eating..I'll have to post you
some video. haha. I felt the urge to get up and dance a little. After lunch, we headed over to another popular crew hang out called Barracuda. It has a pool with a swim up bar and a long pier to run and jump into the ocean! This was the most fun I had all week with my parents. Just relaxing in the pool, drinking Bahama Mama's, and hanging out with family and the entertainment staff. The rest of the day consisted of under water breath holding contests, my dad jumping of the pier like a kid, Randy's wife side belly flopping by accident and all of us playing in the rain when it decided to pour down for a little bit. My dad said he actually liked that it was a little cloudy and rainy cause it wasn't scorching HOT. It was nice to feel the rain on the skin. Liberating. Aside from visiting the ports, hanging out in the balcony room and watching movies with the family was super relaxing too. (Random Note: All the commercials are in Spanish. The movies are all in English, but the commercials are in Spanish. It's fun to try and guess what the commericals are advertising or saying. haha)

Getting to show my mom and dad around was great, but it has also made me excited to get back to them and my friends in the states! With a blink of the eye, we're already at the halfway point of this journey with about 2 months and a week to go. I know the time is going to fly by so fast and it'll be over before I know it!! Hopefully you've enjoyed my "food critic-ish" blog post. haha. I'll leave with you with a few more random facts and I'll try to blog a little more frequently....till next time!!


Random Facts:
-We got a new steward that cleans our rooms. He is GREAT! Much
better than the last.
-Went SCUBA diving for the first time. It was so amazing to be
under water for 30 mins or so. I loved it!
-In order to make best use of my internet time, I have started to
type emails and blogs in a word document first so then I just
have to copy and paste when logged in! I use the same strategy
to read long MSN news stories or info of that nature.... I'll copy
and paste it onto my desktop for reading later on.
-When the boat rocks back and forth a little...we all look like
school of fish swaying from side to side together in a group. lol.
-We are playing a huge July 4th deck party in a few days! Happy 
early 4th!!

xoxo, Katie A.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

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

Day One

This is the section where I will start posting text about the day we have had. Right now I'm just typing to test out what the font will look like.