My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
On Christmas Day we were in Martinique but I was IPM (In Port Manning, where for safety reasons we have to keep a skeleton crew on board in case of emergency. For Cruise Staff, it means we do all the activities for the people staying on board). That was okay. I figured everything would be closed on Christmas anyway. My friends went off and found an awesome beach where I would spend my birthday in a couple of weeks (more than a month later, but in ship time when we were doing 2 week runs, that was basically a couple of weeks) while I helped the youth staff arrange for the kids to meet Santa (our Food and Beverage Director) and get presents (a stuffed penguin). Then in the evening, the festivities began. I don’t recall the menu being particularly Christmassy…
(Oh! I don’t think I wrote about Thanksgiving! There was a turkey carving demonstration
and a traditional turkey dinner. I arrived in the Officers’ Mess and was told that if we ordered turkey it would take an exceptionally long time. They were trying to discourage us from ordering it. I didn’t fall for it. I ordered the turkey and said I would wait. After not an exceptionally long time, my plate arrived with a human sized portion of turkey mashed potatoes and some carrots, but not an American Thanksgiving sized portion. So for the first time in many years, I did not stuff myself at Thanksgiving. Other than that it was a pretty normal day.)
Back to Christmas. The Officers sang carols in the Piazza (I’ll post a video on Facebook) and there was a cheesy Christmas show followed by a midnight service.
The set for the Christmas show. The backdrop is just a movie on our fancy digital screen.
As Christmases are usually spent with family, I took many pictures with my Ship family:
Here I am with the CaptainThis is one of my favorite pictures with Alan. Alan is a very important three stripe electrical officer, and though he’s tried to explain to me what he does many times, I’m still not convinced I understand. He fixes the doors that open automatically. He is somewhat responsible for lights (he hooked me up with some lightbulbs for my lamp that lasted the rest of the contract) and he spends a lot of time in the engine room. But more importantly, he’s our ship dad and an essential part of the family table. Twins! On the left is Kez, our Destination Expert (She is British and yet, I’ve gotten many compliments for her lectures). On the left is Laura who joined the ship as our most charming Guest Entertainer (she sings and plays guitar) turned Ocean Navigator (she helped people navigate the new internet as well as all the new Ocean Medallion features. Laura is Irish, but because of our curly hair, guests and crew could not tell us apart. We loved sharing stories at the end of the day about people thinking we were the other one. This is Carolina (if I could figure it out, I would draw a big heart around her name). Carolina is the Cruise Director, Micca’s girlfriend/wife (depending on who is asking). She hung out with us for two months over the summer and is now back as a dancer in the cast. She was my roommate the night before we joined the ship and a joy to run into. These are some of my favorite people. In the middle is Alan, who you now know, and at our sides are Lazlo and Nichelle, our aerial dancers. Their performances are mesmerizing. Someone once said that if Aliens descended to pick out the perfect people to represent the human race, we would nominate Lazlo and Nichelle. But on top of that, they are the NICEST people. I just love them. Here we have the “whole family” together (from the left, up and around): Lisa Richard, my Entertainment Director most of last summer and for a couple of months this winter, Alan, Simone Smith, the Entertainment Director who got me promoted who became an Ocean Entertainment Director and then became the first Associate Hotel General Manager (but that was in the future at this point) Carolina, Micca, the Cruise Director, and me.
