all aboard?

After switching to a new room, my roomate was the one to get more bed bug bites. After rummaging through all the bedding, we found only one - and it was not the culprit that bit her face. So with that all in mind, we finally got our orders for the ship this afternoon. With much relief... we'll be leaving in a few hours.

pearl harbor

So after being stressed out from the bed bugs, I took my class final. Training is now complete and I am awaiting orders to go to the ship. People are leaving daily for their ship positions - our class of 40 is becoming smaller and smaller. There are still people here from the previous class - we all are hanging out at the hotel. There isn't much time to go sightseeing since we have a formation every few hours just for accountability.

Since my final only took 10 minutes, my department class of 6 cooks were released until the evening formation at 6pm. My roommate and I decided to take off and go sight-seeing even though we only had less than 2 hours. Went to Pearl Harbor since we heard it was close by. Didn't have time to go to the USS Arizona memorial but we did get to see the rest of the stuff.

Pearl Harbor

kaiten - suicide torpedo, first used in 1944. big enough to fit one person.

USS Bowfin

USS Bowfin

bed bugs

So these past few days, I've been getting bit by something. I've also been hanging outside by the hotel pool. I thought it was mosquitoes since they love me so dearly. But this morning I saw more bites on me and a few bites on my roommate. Strange that she had so many since there weren’t any mosquitos in the room… so after our morning muster formation I checked my bed just out of curiosity for bed bugs. I’ve had bed bugs before – when I lived in the dorms for culinary school in San Francisco, I was bitten almost to a point that it looked like I had a bad case of chicken pox.

Since that ordeal in San Francisco, I check the beds in all the places I stay at. Paranoia, I guess. But I have not crossed any more bed bugs and thought those creatures would be out of my life forever. Needless to say, I got complacent. The cruise line has put us recruits up at a hotel and for the first week, everything was good – at least I didn’t notice anything wrong.

You guessed it. After checking my bed this morning, I checked roomie’s bed. Holy smokes! I wished I never did that… just too disgusting to put into words. But yes, there were bed bugs – and lot of them. Not just little baby ones but big ones that looked like they’ve been living there for awhile. If you looked closely you could see their townhouses and condos – a whole village - lined up on the edge of the mattress and waiting for their next victim to fall asleep on their property so they could suck blood.

A call to the front desk brought in the floor supervisor, who then proceeded to check out the room. That resulted in another call to the Executive Housekeeper who looked around – and the more I looked around, the more I found – in the mattress, the furniture and a few just crawling around on the wall. They moved us to a different room down the hall and (supposedly) checked it. After we moved, I checked everything and it seemed ok. I could see some stains in the mattress from (I’m guessing) previous manifestations. But I didn’t see any bugs… roomie never seen bed bugs and was a bit freaked. We ended up having housekeeping wash all of our clothes which doesn’t really do anything since they can live through hot and cold wash water. But I’m thinking it was for a sense of security (more than likely false) just to think clean stuff will keep those creatures away.

Honolulu & Waikiki

Been in Hawaii for a week. Time has been going quickly. Arrived in Honolulu on Monday the 11th, was surprised I had a roommate in the hotel room and began my training on Tuesday morning. My roommate is from Connecticut - will be a dishwasher onboard one of the ships. We have not gotten our ship assignemnts yet. She also went to culinary school and has pastry experience - she's hoping a pastry position will open so she can transfer.

It's been a week of confusion - to begin with my itinerary from my cruise representative stated to be in the lobby at 1030AM, Tuesday morning and meet up with the shuttle bus for transport to the training facility. My roomate and I had discussed our schedules but she was to be in the lobby at 715AM to catch the shuttle. The only thing we could come up with were different classes. Come to find out I was suppose to be on that shuttle as well - I had to take a taxi to the training center. And the taxi driver got lost - he had a GPS system and all. The address I was given was for the Coast Guard Air Station which was the wrong address. After getting the runaround, I finally found out the point of contact's name but not the building I was suppose to be in. After an hour, the front gate security figured out it was the Coast Guard Boat Station training center 5 miles away.

With the transferring of one ship to the Carribean, the cruiseline is in all disarray. There will be two remaining ships in Hawaii until May... then one more ship will be transferred and one remaining in Hawaii. In the meantime, there are 900 employees from the first ship that need to be placed on either boat. So right now, there are not enough rooms on board for us new employees. It surprises me that the company is still hiring with a large surplus of people. We are all currently living out of suitcases in a hotel. Typically, we would have done training on board but with lack of space we've been in the hotel. It's nice since on board we would have 4 people to a room and very little space - at least at the hotel there are only 2 people per room and a large space.

For training we were divided in two separate classes of 20. From there, we all had several classes - alcohol awareness, sexual harassment, water safety, fire fighting, CPR and first aid. Water safety was alot of fun - we had to demonstrate if we could swim, float in immersion suit... it's a good thing I took a few swim lessons to get used to a deep pool and not be able to touch the bottom. The fire training was fun as well. We all dressed up in fire-fighting suits, handled the hoses and put out a mock fire, went thru a maze in darkness (that simulated a smoke filled room) and we had to find the exit.

It's amazing to find out these required classes cost the cruise company so much. They had stated this whole week of training costs about $8,000 per recruit. Plus the cost of the MMD card and flying us out to Honolulu - the company pays quite a bit per person. With this training though - the turnover rate is extremely high. I heard most people do just one season then move on to a less stressful environment working on a barge, steam boat or ferry. The course is not difficult - the only way you can flunk out is if you do not show up for class - we actually had one person fail due to attendance. Miss two days of training and you are fired. Strange though there are a bunch of ex-NCL employees that live in Waikiki working various jobs in town. These are the folks that were fired from the ship but cannot get home. (If you are fired, you have to pay your own way home, if you decide to go).

Was given the day off today at the last minute. Everyone went to the beach... will begin department training in the morning for the rest of this week. We should be receiving our ship assignments by the end of the week.






Some of my classmates (L-R) - matt, david, me, leilani, jason, rhonda, deb














my roommate, Jay
at International Market Place in Waikiki near koi pond















me in fire suit



























fire fighting


















floating in immersion suits






















CPR training
























class photo:
leilani, jason, rhett, matt, tim, eddie, rich, garret
michelle, me, erin, jason, rhonda, jeff, bruce, rhyanna
doug











Waikiki beach




























waterfall decoration - Waikiki

home

Had some time to visit a friend of mine that I haven't seen in a while. Spent the night there and got home on Day 4. Not a bad drive at all. I ended up leaving Yreka, CA and even though I checked the weather forecast and road conditions (which were good), as soon as I got on the interstate the state troopers were flagging everyone over to put chains on.

I've never put chains on before and it must have been either my puzzled expression, looking at the pictures for instructions or just the look of a female in distress but some guy came over to put them on for me, which I thought was super nice. Just as he finished putting them on some other drive by traveler said real politely that the chains were on the wrong tires - my little car has front wheel drive. So the guy moved them from the back to the front. Took him like 5 minutes. Guess he was used to putting them on.

Course, as a typical girl I broke my nail. How bad is that?! Anyway, I only needed them for 12 miles before the roads were good again. Yet those 12 miles took 4 hours with the traffic delay. Took the chains off the tires, stowed them away and hoped with all hopes that I would not have to put them on by myself. Ugh! That would probably be another nail! The roads were just wet with rain the rest of the drive home.

I did have the chance to stop by my favorite waterfall in Oregon. Multnomah Falls - it's the first time I've been there in the winter. Usually it's Spring, Summer or Fall time. So it's cool - there's snow all around the waterfall.

Won't have the chance to do that 1/2 marathon a friend of mine and I had sign up for. Another friend is taking my place. I figured I can always do it next year but wanted to get a head start on the roadtrip due to the weather.

little creek near the waterfall

smaller waterfall off to the side

the upper portion of Multnomah - you can walk across the bridge

lower portion of Multnomah

Multnomah - the whole waterfall from far away