One Year Anniversary

I can't believe it's been almost a year since I've joined Carnival.

Last year on August 19th, my sister's 23rd birthday (sorry again Jenn), I set out for one of my biggest adventures yet. I still remember the morning quite vividly - lots of tears out of sadness and anger. Sad because, well, I was leaving my family for 6 months. Angry because my sister was no where to be found. Thanks Jenn - I take back my apology ;) Just kidding LOOOOVE you.

There is so much that I've learned over this past year that I probably wouldn't even try to remember everything but I can honestly say, as cliche as this is going to sound, I have grown quite a lot as a person, as a host, as a friend all thanks to the people I've met and the places i've seen

I really thought I was going to be able to write this profound entry here, and quite frankly I've got nothing. Anything that I've learned or done or seen or anything like that, has pretty much been written about in previous blog entries and you already know about it.

There really isn't much that stays secret on ships but what is being kept a secret clearly will not be written on my blog. Duhhhh! I have to keep SOME mystery in my life with all of the social media junk that I do!

Here's a few pictures though that may intrigue you if you haven't already seen them on my Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or ... well you get the picture. Get it .. picture. I'm witty. I should probably be the comedy club manager or something ... NOT!

St. Lucia Resort - Auberge Seraphine (best internet in St. Lucia - that I've found so far) 

Jealous of my khakis and polo? You should be. 

This is St. Lucia too .. 

The team - Kevin, Sam, Ben, Me and Fernando 

 Was lounging on Serenity in Barbados - didn't feel like venturing off the ship that day. 

So I really thought if I added pictures to this it would make it a bit more interesting - but I found that it really didn't. I hope YOU found it interesting or at least a little above the lowest level on the boring scale. 

Love you and miss you all. It's a little early for this BUT the countdown is..... (I'm sure Mum's already got it written down somewhere - and if you don't, I'll be quite disappointed)..... 105 days!

Yup - just 105 days till I'm home for another 3 month stint! Can't wait!

Where It Began ...

I do get this question quite a lot, and a reader just asked if I could make a post about my application process and how I got to work for Carnival ... so here it is!

I first applied for cruise ships basically as soon as I got home from living in Toronto and I applied through their websites. Never heard a thing - so gave up on that pretty quick. A few months passed and I was getting bored sitting at home and working in shops so I decided that I would try again. This time, I went looking for agencies. I had heard about how cruise lines will take employees from agencies. I found one that was free (which is always good) and I decided to apply. Lucky for me, it was also based out of Montreal which isn't far from where I live.

The agency was called Cast-a-way. I actually found them on Facebook believe it or not. Facebook - being the creepy thing that it is these days - I guess found out I was searching for cruise jobs on google and decided to put a sponsored link in my sidebar so I clicked on it. On there you can apply through an application (which I did) or send your resume to the email provided (which I also did) - I thought it couldn't hurt to do so.

I actually highlighted all of my retail stuff in my application and then ended up sending in 2 different resumes - one with all my retail experience, and one with all my theatre and television experience. Cast-a-way hires for a lot of different positions on the ship most of which include cruise staff (my job) youth staff, gift shop and spa and I had sent in my resume hoping to get a gift shop position. After I sent in my resume, I got an email about a week later asking me if I'd like to do a phone interview for cruise staff and gave me all of the time slots. I guess they liked my theatre and tv experience more than my retail! That email said that if my phone interview went well I would be invited to the one-on-one/group interview in Toronto. Lo and behold, it went well because I was invited to Toronto.

When I got to the interviews in Toronto there was probably about 25-30 people in the room for this 'group interview'. They said that they were basically in the position to hire a lll of us in the group so we all kind of had the job and unless you did something during the interview that they gave them a sour taste in their mouth we would basically be in. Instead of it being a group interview, it was more like 2 people from the Miami corporate office telling you about the job, what to expect, the guidelines so and so forth. We also did a few little improv things where they would give us a random object and we had to sell it like an informercial. Then we had our one on one interviews with the 2 gentlemen. They told us at the end of the interview that by the following Monday we should get an email about how the interview went and that we would get an email either way.

Well I got the email - and it was a success! They told me all of the stuff about my contract, what I needed to do to prepare. The kind of passport I would need (which don't worry if you're American or Canadian you don't need anything special), when I should get my medical done, how much I should expect for it to cost, what I should pack, all that kind of stuff. When I went to the interview they said they were interviewing to place people on ships around the end of August. I didn't get my ships date until my medical had been done and approved. For my job I had to go through the e-staff college (which you may have seen before in previous posts) so I had to get placed for that first before I was given my full out contract to finish out my 6 months.

That turned out to be a lot lengthier than I had thought but hopefully it answered most or any of your questions. If anybody has any other questions, feel free to post a comment and I'll try and answer them as best I can. :)

xo