Day 7 – May 6, 2010 – Nafplion, Greece and “World Beat”

Even though we gained an hour overnight coming back east to Greece, it seemed like we’d lost about 10 when I woke up this morning. I was exhausted for the first time when I woke up at 8 am. I had a (another!) safety training at 9:30, so I had to get up and grab some breakfast before going down to that. I felt bad for having missed the White Party last night, but I was seriously so tired, I could not have imagined going and trying to have fun and stay out late.

As I got out of the shower, my phone rang, which is pretty unusual and I saw it was from Pieter at work. He was calling to give me a wake up call for my training and also advise me that my name was on a list for TWO more trainings tomorrow! UGHHHHH…Drugs Lecture at 9 and ISPS at 10 (don’t ask me what that is). When I went outside my cabin, I checked the training board and saw it was indeed true, but the good thing is that 4 or 5 other cast members are doing both of those trainings as well, which is great!

I had breakfast and saw my favorite Maitre D’, Rafael, as I do every morning and again at lunch. He works out on The Garden Café patio, which is my favorite place to sit and eat and watch the scenery. He’s from Italy and we do the typical crew chat… “how long have you been doing ships?”, “do you enjoy it?”, “how long are you on this ship for?”, etc. J He’s so nice and has been really sweet to me right from my first day.

I scarfed down my breakfast and ran down to the safety office to check in for training. The receptionist said I didn’t have to do it. I was like WHAT!? She said it was to correct our individual emergency evacuation plans that were due yesterday, but mine was perfect, so I didn’t need to go to the training. HA! I felt pretty good about taking the extra time to do that yesterday.  Still, it would have been nice to know so I could’ve slept.

Since I was up, I decided to go to Personnel and see if there was any way I didn’t have to switch rooms on Saturday. They said NO and “here’s your temporary key”. Nice… I went on a mission to first, find my new room and orient myself around the area. TJ, my Prod. Mgr. also lives down in my new neighborhood, but I couldn’t remember where.  She keeps the daily schedule for the show cast and crew, along with other important announcements (like family and friend discounts) posted for us to check. Since I haven’t been able to find her room ‘til now, I just check the duplicate board in the dressing room.

(So on the family and friend deals… I believe I have access to them whenever someone might be interested. The schedule says there is one sailing on 5/15 that is priced starting at $299 for the lowest level room. These are passenger rooms, though, with total access to all passenger amenities as far as I know. There is also one on 7/17, but I won’t be here then, so I’m not sure if I could still get a discount on a reserved space on the ship. Either way, if anyone wants to take a cruise next week for serious, let me know and I can look into it further!)

Then, I had tech rehearsal for tonight’s show, “World Beat”, which is obviously a revue show featuring music from around the world. The content is iffy in parts, music wise, but the impressive thing about this show is the major set changes for each country that is featured. Very cool things flying in and out of the stage! Back to The Garden Café deck for some lunch with the British dancer, Shane… I’m doing pretty well so far, not pigging out. Only had two desserts so far and trying to not put the entire “Breads of the World” section of the buffet on my plate. :-/\  Since I wasn’t able to go ashore today (it was a 7 am – 1 pm trip to Nafplion), I’ll be hitting the gym in a couple hours after a nice siesta.

Having trouble with the internet at the moment, so I’m just catching up on blog-writing and editing my pictures for fast posting!

Oh yeah, more word yesterday about the troubles in Athens… three people were killed in a bank during the riots surrounding the budget cuts. We won’t be back for almost two weeks, so I’m curious what the climate will be at that point. It’s hard to keep an eye on news out here. Remembering what day it is can be enough of a task! The only non-sports TV channel that we actually get from the satellite is BBC news, which is great, so I’ve been watching that mostly.