G'Day Mate!

December 22, 2007

I can’t believe I’ve already been on the Statendam for 5 days! Right now, we are at sea heading towards Melbourne tomorrow. The first few days here have been great – they just came out of dry dock and the ship looks pretty good for the most part. This ship is beautiful though – exact same lay out as the Ryndam, but much more beautiful with the colors and décor. Club HAL is an absolute disaster – nothing is organized and it’s going to take quite a bit of work to get it into the shape it should be in to make things operate efficiently. None of the sound or electronic systems are working so I’ve had everyone up there the last few days trying to figure it out with no luck! There are three Club HAL staff, but the other two did not arrive until Sydney – so I had two days with the kids alone because they had Visa and snow issues getting here!

The flights over were not as bad as I remembered – total flight time was a little over 18 hours plus 5+ hours of sitting in airports. Went by pretty quickly and the middle seat was empty so that was nice too – having a little extra leg room! The girl who sat in the window seat couldn’t stop talking about how fascinating it was that I was born the year of the Rat – she was a monkey and said that rats and monkeys make the best of friends. She was a little drunk and asked me the same questions 16 times over the course of the flight. Uh well, makes for good stories, right?

We’ve been doing a lot of planning and searching for craft supplies since I’ve been here - organizing things for the holiday party for the kids. The Atrium here is decorated beautifully for the holidays – the fountain is filled with snow and gifts and there’s a few Christmas trees out there too! The kids have a Christmas party on Christmas eve (which is two days from now, it’s 2 p.m. here and it’s the 22nd of December) and on Christmas morning we have Santa Claus coming to the lounge to surprise them. It’ll be a pretty laid back day.

We were in Sydney for 2 days and we literally pulled directly into the Sydney Harbour with the Opera house out our port side windows and the Harbor Bridge out or Starboard side windows! It was beautiful and I can’t wait to start doing excursions in all of the ports. I actually think I did many of them when I was here in 2002, but I want to do them again, because WHY NOT?

Today I’m actually quarantined in my room. My roommate ate sugar-free candy and got “the runs”. They tell us to report and “runs” or throwing up to the infirmary because of the GI stuff and NL Virus. I told her she shouldn’t report it because that’s what it was and she would be quarantined for 72 hours no matter what. So, of course, she told them and she’s in the infirmary confined for 72 hours and because I’m the roommate, I’m confined for 24 hours in my room. We can’t leave nor have anyone in our rooms and I have to order room service to get food. So really, there’s lots of sleeping and hanging out – I’m still in my pajamas and its 2 p.m. I’m supposed to be released at 11:30 p.m. tonight as long as I have no symptoms of NLV. The worst part is there’s one girl that’s dealing with all the programs. Uh well, I guess I did it for the first 2 days, right?

All in all, a great first few days. Still getting to know lots of people, really haven’t met too many people yet. This ship has lots of cliques, but there will be a big turnover in the next few weeks, so that will help break those up a bit. I’m excited about what the next few months has to offer! I will try and post as much as possible – but my computer is barely working and the internet café for crew has been down since I got here – so we’ll see how long my computer lasts. Maybe I’ll buy myself a new computer eventually?!

I hope and pray everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2008!