Adventure #1

5:45pm CEST/ 11:45am EDT

Well, today was my first excursion off the ship. It was a lot of fun… But hopefully I’ll be a little more prepared for my next one. This one mostly consisted of me wandering around aimlessly, trying to find a place where I could get internet access so I could check my bank account, so I could get cash, so I could buy a phone card to make calls home, and an internet card so I could maybe finally post some of these blogs and pictures I took today. Whew.

Stockholm is a very cool old city. Something I didn’t realize about the city is that it’s comprised of multiple islands… That proved interesting for the walking around… Anywho, I’ll spare you the history lesson. If you want to know, look it up on wikipedia or something. I’d link you but since I’m not online right now (writing this in Word, to be posted later) you’ll have to find it your damn self.

Got up at 9 for rehearsal in the theater at 10… Except the Shore Ex (“ex” short for “excursion”) folks screwed up their scheduling information or something… So rehearsal was postponed til 4. No big – all aboard for crew was at 3:30 anyway. So I grabbed my backpack out of my cabin and headed for the gangway. Didn’t have as much trouble as I was expecting in getting off the ship, which was nice. They had this nice blue line painted on the ground too, for pedestrians walking from the cruise ship dock to the city. Apparently they do a lot of cruise ship business, based on the terminals at the harbor, and some of the tourist trap shopping places. There is certainly a lot of crap for sale in Stockholm. I imagine it’s like that everywhere, but we’ll see… Reminded me of Nashville in that respect.

Anyway… Not much to tell. Finally found a place to get wifi – though it was in the middle of a busy outdoor shopping area so I didn’t want to linger on the computer too long. I felt sort of awkward… I didn’t see anyone else with laptops or anything and didn’t want to make myself TOO obvious… Or something. Anyway, did what I set out to do and I now have a phone card and internet card. I’ll be seeing to both later – as it’s only noon at home now anyway. Speaking of which, the clocks go forward ANOTHER hour tonight, so I’ll be in a different time zone next time I write… And will be 7 hours ahead of home. Anyway… See pictures for specific stuff on Stockholm. It’s a cool city, I’m just not sure what to say about it really. Might just be cuz I’m tired and kind of sore from walking around for like 4 ½ hours.

On an unrelated note, the ship is listing a LOT right now. More so I think than it has the entire time I’ve been on. Rocking baaaaaack and forth… baaaaack and forth. So much so that I had to brace myself a little bit earlier in the theater so I didn’t fall over. A little unsettling, I’ll admit. But you get used to it. Let’s see uh… Had a few more training things I had to go to. I should’ve known I wasn’t done! One about crowd control… And then one on Noroviruses (diarrhea and vomiting... aka the 24 hour flu). Apparently this is a big damn problem on cruise ships. I mean I can see why… But they spray your hands with sanitizer every time you go into one of the buffets… And there are hand sanitizers set up ALL over the ship. I mean you can stand in any one place (in the guest areas, I mean) and look around and probably see three of the things. In the crew areas, they’re really only in the mess hall… But hand cleanliness is no joke around here. It’s interesting, but… I mean I get it. They don’t want to have to sanitize every square inch of this damn boat because of an outbreak of the runs and puking, that would otherwise spread like wildfire in these close quarters. They tactfully call it Gastroenteritis… Or just simply GI. Not what you wanted to hear about, I’m sure ☺ Anyway, then I had one other training on hazardous materials. Nothing I didn’t already know after taking that Environmental Management class in high school. Good stuff. Real cheesy videos they showed us on the last two trainings. And I managed to what the shit out of my head on the projector in the lecture room not once but TWICE yesterday. Yay.

Alright… I think I’m done for now. I’m hungry and I have to change and be back to the theater in an hour for the shows tonight. “Country Gold” – whoopty doo. The way the shows work – I find this interesting – is NCL contracts out this company to produce the shows and… ya know… train and rehearse with the singers and dancers. Do all the routines and get the shows down prior to coming on the ship… So then the casts for the shows change every couple of months but it’s the same shows… And the new cast members come on board prepared, and knowing their parts and where they fit in with the choreography and everything. It’s pretty neat and seems to work well. Makes it nice for us because we don’t have to spend forever and ever going through the show over and over. We usually set up for whatever show the night before… and then run one rehearsal the day of, and then two shows that night. Easy enough. Tonight they’ve got me working backstage for the first time. Don’t really know what it involves. Rehearsal consisted mostly of me trying to stay the HELL out of the way of frantic running dancers… and laughing about the tilt of the ship and the guys on the comm.

I’ve been getting really bad hiccups lately at random. Very annoying. I had a big single hiccup the other day and someone told me it meant someone was thinking about me. I mean I don’t doubt someone was but… I’d never heard that about single hiccups before. And if that’s the case with these outbreaks of hiccups… Well… I can’t very well ask you to stop but… Ow!

Alright for real… Time to change and eat and work and sleep. My ankles and shins are stiff already haha… Til next time…