Day Eighteen: Family Day!

Well, we had boat drill again today. Oh, man. This week’s was interesting. Magic and I were supposed to have special drill duties, but someone else had to take over for Magic since she had been sick. She did get released from quarantine, but spent the whole day in the room sleeping and laying low. I had to be downstairs by 9:00 to find out what I had to do. Since boat drill wasn’t until a little after 10:00, I had time to go to the Tailor to get my pants hemmed, to the doctor to get checked again for GI, and to personnel to get my card reactivated. When it was time to go to boat drill, I had to go to deck 11, aft with a sign that said “I Need Wheel chair.” (note the fabulous grammar) When I got there, one of the girls asked me if I needed a wheelchair and called down to reception for it. I sat on the stairs and waited until 3 Filipino men and 1 Filipino woman show up with a wheelchair. They called down to the bridge to see if we were allowed to use the elevator (sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t in a drill). They didn’t get a response right away, so they continued as though it were a regular emergency. That means that the four of them had to CARRY ME DOWN THE STAIRS IN A WHEELCHAIR. Wow. I kept offering to get out and let them carry the empty chair while I walked. That didn’t work. So this group of people carried me down 2 full flights of stairs before they got the okay for us to take the elevator. Then we took the elevator down and ran all the way to my pretend muster station. No one was there, so I told them we were supposed to be out on the deck. They took me there, parked me, and left. I had to sit and wait for the rest of the drill. The safety guy walked past and asked me something, then suggested that I start filling out my evaluation form. The only negative comment I had was that no one gave me a life jacket. I probably would have asked for one had it been a real emergency. When it was all over, I walked my wheelchair back to reception and headed to our meeting.

I don’t know if it is supposed to be a weekly thing or not, but we’ve had these meetings in the theatre with all of the cruise staff last week and today. Today was not the day I wanted one. Lego and I were supposed to meet up with Crocodile, his mom, and his aunts. The ferry we wanted to take over to Hamilton left at 11:30 am. The next one was not until 1:00 pm. So I ended up giving Kiwi, one of the new girls, my sheet because she had to take hers back to the Safety Manager also and when the meeting ended at 11:25, Lego and I booked it out of there. We grabbed our stuff from our rooms and booked it off the ship. After we got off of the gangway, we ran around the road to the ferry stop. As we got closer, I got more tired and started waving hoping that I would get either the ferry driver’s or Croc’s attention. Well, it sort of worked. Croc saw us and was going to make the ferry wait, but I think that we also got there in the nick of time. We took the ferry to Hamilton, walked to the bus station, and took the bus (which was such crazy driving that Croc’s family was a little freaked out) to the caves.

In the early 1900’s, two caves were discovered in Bermuda. They have opened Crystal Cave and Fantasy Cave to the public to see the stalactite and stalagmite formations as well as the lakes of water that have pooled. It was really neat and we had an awesome time seeing it all alongside the company we were with. One of Croc’s aunts even treated us to the whole experience. We had such a great time.

After the caves, we took the bus into St George, a city that I had not seen before. It is at the other end of the island from King’s Wharf. We drove past the airport on the way, too, which was fun to see also. Once we got to St. George, we only had a little bit of time to walk around and get some ice cream before we caught the ferry back.

At that point, Lego and I just came back to the ship to start getting ready for that evening’s program. Croc had the night off because he had one YC of the week and chose to make it on a night where he would be able to see his family.

That night at program was rocket science/under the stars. Magic was still out and Popsicle started feeling poorly. He wasn’t sure if it was GI or the fact that he had spent all day on the beach in the sun drinking 4 beers. You pick which one it was. Because he went to bed, I helped out in the 2-5 room again. It was fun, but it was totally unplanned which kind of sucked. Oh well.

After all that, I just ended up hanging out. I decided not to go out with everyone again. It had been a busy day!