I´m sorry....what?!

That may possibly be you response after reading this - it was certainly mine when the situation arose 3 days ago.

I am not staying on the Spirit until June 17th.

I am now leaving on the second week of April, going home for a holiday (ha!) for a week and then being flown to ´The Destiny´ to work for the summer sailing round the Med.

Crazy how things can change in a week huh?

The Destiny looks like this:

It is bigger than the Spirit but only has the same amount of passengers. It is the new addition to the Thomson fleet and I will basically doing the same job I do now aboard there only with more Stage Management duties and I´ll be sharing the DJing and Tech stuff with someone else.

It was such a tough decision to make but I was really flattered to be offered it and it sounds like it´ll suit me down to the ground.

The down sides are that I´m going to have to leave this team, who I get on with really well, and start getting to know a whole new set all over. I know I do this all the time when I move jobs and contracts at home but for some reason this time it´s different. Still I might get to see them, as the Destiny follow´s the Spirit´s path around the the Med, so hopefully I´ll get to say hello!
Also I only get one week at home to sort my whole life out until November which is going to be a bit of a tall order (as it is probably going to involve moving all my stuff from Leeds back to Birmingham!!). Also I won´t get to do the Big Event in Birmingham and I won´t see my family and friends much :(

Still I would have been a fool if I´d have said no and I spent 2 days agonising over it so now I feel that I have made the right decision by Sense if not by Sensibility!

Fizzy Cravings

In the team meeting yesterday Richard (Cruise Director)informed us that we are half way through our Canary Islands tour - another 8 weeks of this and then we´re off to the Med. He then went through all the ports we will be visiting there and it sounds amazing! Barcelona, Rome, Ibiza, Villefranche and all sorts of other places (most of which I haven´t heard of!) but we get more time to explore when we´re there so it should be cool :)

I´ve had a fun morning with the guys from the ´Freedom Band´ in a music shop. I´ve reserved an electro acoustic nylon stringed guitar, and it´s pretty sweet. It has a thinner body which makes it easier (and sooo much more comfortable) for me to play and it has a great sound. I can´t buy it ´til I get paid next but I can´t wait!

Not that I´ve had a lot of time this week. We had LOADS of kids on (of all ages!) so kids zone needed help with some extra activities inc. Family Bingo and a Junior Talent Show. So much work for 20 minutes - the kids had a blast though so it was all worth it :)

I sang on Karaoke last night. I was the first time anyone on here has heard me sing and I was really nervous! Fortunately there was only the 2 guys doing Karaoke who were in there from the team so it wasn´t too bad. I sang ´Don´t Know Why´ by Norah Jones and I think it went pretty well ;) I think the glass of red wine that David (Ass. Cruis Dir.) bought for me probably helped, although I was still shaking!!

We have appraisals this week, eeek!?!

I´ve given up fizzy drinks for Lent. When I was a kid we were only allowed fizzy drinks on a weekend (in fact I think that still applies at home - mum?) so this should not be a problem. However having worked in bars and having been on this ship for the last 2 months where the drink flows freely (well...almost!) I think I might have gone a little carbonated crazy. Right now I would love nothing more than a long cold glass of coke! I feel like I´m turning into an orange juice I´ve drunk so much of the stuff - I can´t find orange squash anywhere....*sniff*

Anyhoo, must head back and clean some mics, check they´re working, and see if the lighting board is going to co-operate with the manual :)

Mended Footsies

It´s been a year since my Operation. Wow, where did that year go? I still remember vividly having to phone the hospital on the Thursday afternoon to see if they had a bed for me. I was so nervous, my hand was shaking as I lifted the receiver! But the whole thing went pretty well.

It really has made such a huge difference. I spent about 7 years of my life with severe pain in my big toe joint after every day spent on my feet, I was frequently in tears because it hurt so much. My steel toe caps that I had to wear for work/Uni made me cringe everytime I put my feet in then because I knew the pain I was going to be in after a few hours. But now all that is gone and replaced with a ´normal´ ball of the foot pain from wearing the strappy shoes I have to wear onboard that is perfectly dealable with!

I can however predict when it´s going to rain and occasionally my right toe gives me a bit of pain but on the whole the change is amazing!

This week has been good. We had some 2-weekers on from Glasgow who were up in HS every night so we spent time chatting about the happenings in that fair city, apparently ´The Shack´and ´Trash´(the club underneath it) burnt down, scary!

My aim this week is to get to grips with the Lighting Desk upstairs, apparently it was programmed somewhere back in the mists of time and noone knows whats connected to what so there is my challenge!

I was on line dancing with Dom twice this week and I´m down for it again tommorow! You never know I might have actually remembered the dances this time! It´s fun to do some other stuff aswell :)

No...I am NOT Spanish!!!

A guy came up to the DJ booth the other night and told me that he had hesitated in coming over because he didn´t expect me to be English (he was Welsh - not sure if that makes a difference!) he thought I was Spanish. Now as anyone who reads my blog who who has known me for any length of time will know, this is a common occurence. But 3 yes, 3 times in one night.

In this post I listed the nationalities people have thought I am. I can now add Malaysian to that list and the top 2 are New Zealand (Kiwi) and Spanish.

I´ve had a flippin´rotten cold all week and am now left with a cough that sounds like a smoke 40-a-day and hurts! My other wisdom tooth is also threatening to do what the first one did (come out too far) and Dental isn´t covered on my medical - owwww :(

I got Oscar´s (The passenger´s are asked to nominate 3 member´s of staff who have made their holiday special - it means more to the crew as they get rewards!- we just get a warm *fuzzy* feeling) this week and a very cool comment off some passengers so I feel last week went well!

Have been guitar hunting today but nothing has really grabbed me, still we shall persevere!