The Post That Isn't Much of a Post

Somehow when I woke up this morning it was Thursday, and now as I’m posting it it’s Friday morning on my side of the world and just barely still Thursday on the east coast in the US. I decided a few months ago I would put posts up every Tuesday and every Thursday. I am really stretching what the definition of that is today. On top of that I’ve committed the cardinal sin of blogging by not having another post ready to go.

On the scale of weeks onboard this one has gone by quickly and has been fairly busy. For the longest time there was seemingly no progress being made on getting people home. I’m sure there was some happening in the office and with discussions with embassies and all of that, but from what we were seeing onboard – actually seeing people get to go home – it wasn’t happening.

About a week ago things began to change and every day for about the past five days, we have waved tenders of crew away as they head towards flights home. The tender today had 17 crew from our ship as well as a good number from the Pacific Aria. Those crew went in one side of our ship and then right out the other side. It has become pretty common to combine tender efforts with other ships. Some days our crew go to another ship to combine and go on one of their tenders. Yesterday the tender was our crew and a few from the Eurodam.

What this has meant for me was that when a friend said, “do you want to come to the pool this afternoon?” I was choosing “should I work on my blog, or should I spend time with my friend?” For the last two months we’ve all been sailing around with no deadline on when you would be able to hang out with these friends. There seemed to be a never ending timeframe on when you could spend time together because no one knew when they were leaving. All of a sudden that changed and being responsible and working on my blog was overtaken by wanting to spend time with my friends that were leaving.

When it is someone’s last night onboard it is pretty much a given that if you are friends with them you will spend time with them. So, what happens when your friends “last night” changes three different times? And, the days in between you have other friends leaving the next day? I certainly don’t regret the time that was spent, but I am really excited for a nice quiet night in of watching a movie with Stuart tonight. Saying goodbye every single day is emotional. You see these people leaving and more often than not they don’t know what they’ll have for a job, they don’t know when they’ll see any of their friends again, some of them are flying to different countries and then catching buses organized by various embassies and well, it’s a lot.

The other part is that I got this idea in my head that I would make facemasks for people going home. So, do I work on this blog or make face masks? There seemed to be more of a deadline for people needing a facemask than for me writing this blog. Then, people started realizing that I have a sewing machine onboard and, with the tailor shop closed, I became their best bet to get that pair of pants turned into shorts.

It’s great that people are going home and this week all of that has put this blog on the backburner for me, and that’s okay.

The last part of it is, the posts that I have mostly ready really should have a whole bunch of pictures (do you really want to read about my adventures in India without any pictures?), and well, I am sick of paying for megabytes to post pictures, and frustrated when I’m paying for those megabytes and they still don’t post. Every once in awhile there has been decent internet from shore side that gives me hope. Those days I run down to grab my laptop and head up to the Lido, sit in the exact spot that gave me great service five minutes before and it seems to be gone. I’ve managed to get some of the videos I’ve taken in the last few weeks posted online but it never seems to be when I have my laptop out and can do anything useful with that internet.

Next week, when all of my girlfriends have gone home, and when there are no more facemasks to make, I will fight with getting those darn pictures up and give you guys a great blog post. For today though, here’s my post that isn’t much of a post.