SURRPRIIIIISSEEEEE!

I'm currently sitting in the airport on my way home to surprise my parents for their surprise 25th anniversary party that's happening on September 7 and there are SO many guests from the cruise here. Can't get away from them lol. Luckily it's mostly people I like that have been saying hi to me and telling me to enjoy my vacation. Took some pictures with another family here which was fun … then some other people questioned why they were getting their picture taken with me - also funny! 

So I hid out in my hometown for most of the week before the party on Saturday night. Do you know how hard it is to go around a town that you've lived in for 16 years trying to run errands and NOT run into someone you know? It's pretty damn hard! I had some success though as not a single person that I ran into spoiled the surprise - so for that THANK YOUUUUUU! The party was a monstrous success! Between, the surprise of me being there (their faces were absolutely priceless) to the family and friends that were there. We ended up with their wedding party there as well which was great and some Toronto friends for my Dad that we hadn't seen in probably 12 years! Huge thanks to my family that helped Jenny and I out with everything. I hope everyone had as great a time as I did! 

The week before I left for the surprise party, I was HOD and one of my readers Jeremy came cruising which was so exciting!! He found my blog, then my twitter and all that jazz and myself, his partner Price and friends Francesca and Chris and their parents had a great time and they even invited me to have dinner in the dining room with them which was great. A first for me - I had eaten in a carnival dining room since I cruised when I was 16, and even then I didn't really appreciate it that much, I just wanted the 24 hour pizza and ice cream ;). Hopefully we will all stay in touch for quite a while and we'll be able to run into each other on another fun ship. And Jeremy, I'm still working on getting that platinum ship on a stick for yuh ;) 

I got to go on my first crew excursion so far this contract the other week in St. Kitts. We did a zip-lining tour with Sky Safari! For those of you on my Facebook you may have seen some of the photos already but for those of you who aren't, I'll post a few with this entry. I had never been zip-lining before I was a little more than nervous you could say. Hurling myself off a platform to go fly across a ravine wasn't exactly how I wanted to die lol. And luckily, since I'm currently sitting here writing this, the odds worked in my favour aaaaand I didn't die ;) WOO HOO! There was quite a large group of people that went - some being crew and come being crew family - Kelsie's family was on board. We got there, go the low down and then we did a practice one so we could practice how to stop and what position we should be in when we stop and all that fun stuff. Then we all piled into a pick up truck and took a trek up the mountain to start. There were 4 big zip lines - some single, some double we could race. For the record Sweeney, I won ;) Mostly just cause I'm bigger haha but whatever! All in all it was such a great day and I would do it all again in a heart beat! I loved it! 

Last week when I was HOD, I fell in love with so many of the trivia families that came to my stuff during the day - especially a family from the Bronx, who now live in Arizona. Peter, Aurora, Reno and Corrina - if you're reading this, I hope I get to see you on another fun ship soon! Don't forget I'll be on the Imagination in March and Phoenix isn't too far from LA! See you at LAX. That week was also a great week doing sports trivia. When you're HOD on this ship, you do the sports trivia everyday at 5:30 in the sports bar and you start to get a following by the second or third day. One gentleman, Larry (or Mr. Mets as most of the people at trivia called him) wrote me a little note and gave me a $10 tip because he enjoyed it so much! Another lady, Wilma, said that she would love to see me as a cruise director one day which is a HUGE compliment - especially since she was a platinum guest and has done her fair share of cruises. That meant a lot for sure. 

I ended up going on another crew excursion this past week in St. Lucia - another zip lining one. I'm turning into quite the adventurous person - just kidding. But it was a lot of fun. We took a 20 minute bus ride to the rainforest where we got to do 9 different zip lines (not as high or as long as the ones in St. Kitts but there were more of them) and we did one Tarzan kind of swing and a repel which was kind of scary but great none the less. 

The day I came back, on September 8, Sam also came back from her stint on the Pride and we got another host Hugo to replace Fernando. We're also getting a new host right out of the college tomorrow. His name is Matt and he's Canadian! Yay for another Canadian! Have heard good things about him already so we shall see and we'll make him feel right at home! Stephanie, my ACD, also leaves tomorrow and we'll be getting a new ACD, Eric who I've actually had the chance to work with before as my Cruise Director so it should be a great way to finish off my contract although I'm gonna miss Estephanie! ;) 

I started writing this blog on September 1 so everything has been totally jumbled together but hopefully you followed and are still enjoying the blog! By the way, 70 days till I'm home -  which translates to 10 cruises. Probably 2 or 3 more HOD weeks and probably 7 or 8 debarks! Woop Woop!