Wellington, NZ

So I'm sat in Starbucks, a welcome escape from the heat outside. It's un-usually hot today, Wellington is famed for being cold and rainy, but the last 2 times we've been here its been scorching! So you'll usually find all of the crew who have the day off in Starbucks, in the A/C with a frappucino. It's some un-written rule, your can only order a frappucino and you will not talk to each other, you will sit and make the most of your 30 mins free Internet!

So what's been going on, the usual partying. Ended up getting to bed around 4am this morning, which isn't so bad since I'm not working today until 7pm. This is the norm usually. Not working the next day? Get pished up and go 'hangover shopping'.

I'm trying to come up with costume ideas for the upcoming crew party, it's an 'out of Africa' party so costume ideas are a little difficult. And to top it off the costume shop here on Wellington has moved to a different city, helpful!

We've got a new team member joining today, she's a new hire which should be interesting. Not that I mind of course, they've sent another girl so I get to keep my own room, awesomeness! The team is going to be changing a lot soon, lots of people leaving, and then new people coming. Big changes!

We've not got 3 more New Zealand cruises, and then we start a 28 day Australia cruise, cannot wait!! And then after that Asia!!! I've also applied for local leave in Bangkok, I'm supposed to be flying home from the anyway and if it gets approved e company will just book my flights later on so I can stay in Thailand for like 10 days before coming home. I have to pay for hotels etc of course but in Thailand it's not exactly expensive to find a bed.


So Wellington, it's just a big city really. Famously where the weta studios are that created the lord of the rings trilogy and more recently the hobbit, but also things like avatar, the life of pi etc, we also done here. But other than that it's the same as any other city, shops and restaurants everywhere, people, traffic, the usual! Oh and there's a small beach. Which today is completely heaving!

Working tomorrow and then I'm going on a shore excursion to the set of hobbiton, from The Lord of the rings movies. Should be fun.

Ciow ciow
Xxxx

New Years in New Zealand

So the last cruise was the New Years cruise, and what a cruise it was! Right from the word go we could tell that we were going to be busy.  Every bar on board was full to capacity on the very first night of sailing, so we had a taste of what was to come over the New Year’s period. For example, the first formal night was so busy that even though there was no formal party in the schedule, we all got paged by the boss asking us to stay in the night club until midnight. It does make sense to have a party on the first night of a new year’s cruise, but needless to say no-one had prepared for a big party night so it was a bit of a surprise,  so we were all dancing away until the early of hours, at the end of which were all kind of doing the ‘step-dig can’t be bothered any more’ dance, mostly because we had all been on our feet since 9am that morning, but hey that’s the job we signed up for!

New Years Eve, this is the night when the ship basically goes into crazy, wasted party zone. We had a balloon drop party in the Atrium, and we were supposed to give out the New Years hats and horns etc for midnight. We started outside the theatre and I don’t know what happened to those people, it was like instinct took over, they grabbed and they shouted, pushing each other out of the way, starting fights, all over a paper hat......they were animals! One of the girls I work with is very small and she got the worst of it, we have 2300 passengers on board and they all descended on her, its amazing she wasn’t hurt. Physically I mean, she was pretty upset afterwards.  So at midnight they dropped the balloons and everyone had a good time.

At the same time as the atrium party we had the open air deck party; basically we can’t fit everyone in the atrium so everyone else went upstairs to party with the band, I actually thought that the deck party was more fun, there was more people in more space, a live band and most of the crew went to the deck party as well, loads of fun! 

Also, on a side note. I have awesome new swimming shorts. Just sayin.

However, while all this was going on I was stuck in the ‘calm’ lounge. There was still live music with a singer but I was a little disappointed because just before midnight everyone decided they would rather be where the part was, so I saw the New Year in by myself on the microphone watching senior citizens making out on the dance floor. Let’s hope that’s not how the rest of my year turns out!

Then I head to the crew bar, and there is a boy, I won’t call him a man, because in my book men don’t act like this, who...well let’s say he likes me. However, its awkward now since new year’s because he had a little too much to drink and decided he was going to molest me in the middle of the crew bar, then after I turn him down he calls me in my cabin asking me if I want a massage, it’s about 3am by this point so of course I said no. But since then he gets very excited when he sees me and I am really not interested, so to be honest, I have no idea what to do.

So thats that, nothing much more exciting going on, as I said before this is an unusually quiet ship!