First Cruise Over!

12/15/08

So, today is our first turn around day! Our first 22-day cruise is over and we're on to our Antarctic Experience Holiday voyage! I'm beginning to get excited to spend the
Holidays at Sea, though I know I'll miss everything about Christmas at home.

One of the girls that is here was also on the Veendam when I was there. I had told her that I really wanted to try to find a small Christmas tree for in my room. The other
day, she saw one in the crew area that was going to be thrown out because one of the base legs was broken. Needless to say, I went and took it so now I have my
Christmas tree! A passenger that left today gave me some garland that she had so I could put it around the tree... Danny and I went into town in Valparaiso, Chile today.
We went to a mall (the first one we've seen in quite some time!) and got ornaments for our tree and a star for on top! We also found some Chritmas lights (rainbow icicles)
that have a European plug. It actually ends up working better with that type of plug cause we have European outlets in our rooms that we never use. Needless to say, I'm
in a great mood because I'm getting ready for the holidays!

We had a meeting last night to celebrate getting through out first long cruise as a team. We also went over all of the different things that will be happening for the
holidays. Basically, tonight we began the celebrations with a tree lighting ceremony. We sang Christmas carols and lit all of the trees on the ship at the same time. The
beverage department went around giving out wine and cookies. Pretty nice. On Christmas Eve we have a Christmas show where there are 3 choirs. The Filipino Choir,
Indonesian Choir, and English-speaking Choir. We all have to be in the choir... obviously they haven't heard me sing... eeeeek! Midnight mass will be in the big show
lounge, so I'll be going to that. Christmas Day we'll be in Antarctica, so we won't have any outdoor sporting events because of the environmental laws. They're really
strict and include no paper napkins on outside decks, no smoking, and no sports equipment. We will still have events like a Christmas sing-a-long, pictures with Santa,
and Elf Bingo. I'm pretty excited to dress up like an elf for bingo haha. Thennnnn, New Year's Eve will be fun. We have parties in the show lounge, night club, and ocean
bar. The broadcast department is going to sync all of the channels so that when they do the countdown in the show lounge, we can have it on the big screens in the
nightclub and ocean bar. That way everyone will be counting down at the same time. In the show lounge, they do a big balloon drop... and at midnight, the ships
whistles will sound. I'm pretty excited for all of that...

Anyways, I'll try to keep posting stuff every few days as the holiday nears. I love you all and hope you all are having fun preparing for Christmas and the holidays!

Below is a link to the pictures from King Neptune's Ceremony. I was the last to go, so they dumped EVERYTHING they hadn't used on myself and the other event staff guy. It was definitely memorable... hahaha.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2347920&id=5700561&saved#/album.php?aid=2347920&id=5700561