Canada Day, Abandon Ship

Last night was the crew party on the helipad.

We also saw Wall-E which will make you think a great deal about cruising. I loved it.

The clouds here are SPEKTAKULAR! And are my favorite things. Also there is RAIN! And local port people who have cars/jobs/a nearby Best Buy which it turns out is incredibly comforting. Puerto Rico is great so far although a cabbie DID try to rip us off, but I think they are trained that way. And he only tried for $3. As soon as a cabbie speaks Spanish, it is war.

No one is asking me if I am a vegetarian anymore, which I think is due to my increased human volume from living with desserts. I was very proud of myself for not having ANY cookies OR dessert with meals, although, full disclosure, there was a bag of carmel chocolates that I fell on which was my fault.

In incredible news for those of you who know Bar Habor or Improv Acadia, they had 3 Bar Harbor beers available for free at the crew party last night. I lost my mind. They are a blueberry-infused beer, a ginger-infused beer and a stout (barf). All of the crew wants “Hein-e-kin! Hein-e-kin!” and when you don’t have that, they say “oh, coke? Soh-dah?” Turns out if you are foreign, you probably don’t care about microbrews. This is probably because you don’t trust local things, which I don’t blame anyone after seeing Mexico (sorry Mexico). Our bartending system was like this: one giant trash can full of soda (Dr. Pepper and Coke and some Sprite and Sprite Zero) and ice. One giant trash can full of Budweiser and ice and a few Bud lights, which were hard to tell apart because there was no light. Another trashcan of mainly Bud lights, with some Budweiser. Then a trash can of Smirnoff Ice, which is a popular alternative to “Hein-e-kin!” Then 2 other trash cans, one that was the Blueberry beer mixed with the ginger beer mixed with a bottom layer of Heinekin and some Guiness. Well, we couldn’t see anything and then one of the Smirnoff Ice’s broke in the giant trash can. Bartending means “open bottles quickly, set on table.” We were 3 actors running the table, and we did pretty well until a real bartender came to help us and well, before he came we had the table like a 1/3 full of bottles. Maybe really like 3/8ths. The bartender, one guy, filled it in like mmm…5 minutes. Our system was “bump into each other” and “try to use the broken bottle opener many many times” and “only get two beers at a time from the trash can.” His was “BE A MACHINE.” This is a better system.

It was also Canada Day yesterday, so all of the Youth Counselors (always Canadian almost) dressed up and jumped around. I chatted with some of the guys from the Phillipines, one of whom told me this is the best ship. It WAS the Wind, but that’s now a ship in Asia. Then I saw pictures of another guy’s kids and he told me how a ferry went down 3 days ago in the Phillipines, killing everyone on board. We made fun of him for his party conversation and he told us the province where he is from, although the only other place I know is Mindinau because a bunch of people were killed there in a terrorist thingie a while back. This is my choice of party conversation. WHEEEEE!

The crew seems much nicer and friendlier here and no one seems like they must constantly get completely obliterated drunk. The crew is not so exclusively Filipino and Indonesian. We have people from Peru, a guy from Panama, Haitians, Bulgarians, Ukranians, and a rare few Mexicans. Mainly Filipino, yes, but everyone seems friendlier and more willing to chat. Even our room stewards are nicer and don’t seem as constantly stressed out as our last guy on the Star, who was always sweating and wild-eyed and only was really happy when we smuggled him Amarula, which is a liqueur from the Amarula fruit (obvious).

This morning was a boat drill that we had to take part in. It was an entire “abandon ship” drill, meaning 1000 people had to leave the ship all in their uniforms. It was very confusing and not what I thought, which is that someone would go “ABANDON SHIP!!!” and we’d all freak out and jump down things like the blow up chutes in an airplane. I mean, in fire drills, it’s all about time and can-we-make-it-out-in-90-seconds, etc. Well, for this one, we stood around on deck 7, all of us tired and hung over. They announced the drill, did the alarm, then we waited for 15 minutes as people passed us by and a Panamanian gentleman said “oh, who are you” etc. Then a very hung over nice British party girl from the spa came and said “yeah I guess I’m your leader” or something to that effect. Then we waited for a while longer and guys from the engine room in coveralls stood next to us and did not talk because they are Eastern European or something. Then another guy came over and we joked around. Then someone said “follow him” and we started following some guy out. We calmly left the ship and went to stand in a field behind a sign for “B2” even though we were instructed to stand behind “B1,” but there was no B1 sign. Then we got no word. Our crew leader came out about 15 minutes later and got us behind the right sign. Then she said “I’m dehydrated” and sat down and we discussed tattoos. Then someone randomly gave another castmate a “C1” sign and told him to hold it, next to the “B1” sign, 4 rows down from the other, differently formatted “C1” sign, so it went C1, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2 and so on. Then about 15 minutes later, he got in trouble for holding it.

The safety officer is a terrifying Swede in and all white coverall. There were other random guys walking around, slowly everybody trickled out from the ship. One guy, a waiter, was still holding his tray, which I do not understand. The Indian guys (who frequently wear women’s jeans—it must be cultural) quietly made fun of someone for saying “WAH-ter” like an American, instead of “wuh-tah,” like a Brit, something they found clearly hilarious. Then apparently it was over and we all went back on the ship. I hope to the dear Lord in Heaven that we never have to abandon ship for real. The drill took an hour and 15 minutes, no one knew what was going on. Maybe fires at sea are slow acting. I hope this is true. Thank you.