Rhodes, Greece

Our new band leader Jorge is fantastic! It’s a totally different band with him here. He is easygoing, responsible, and funny. We can spend time together as a band outside of playing music and still have a great time. Our former band leader was extremely antisocial. But now things are really good. There’s a good atmosphere in the band, because for the most part we genuinely like each other. It’s a really good feeling, and very different from my first weeks onboard. Everything is more fun, even the performances, because of the way Jorge runs things.

This cruise I got my first mail from home! It was SO exciting!!! Thank you to my wonderful family! I know it was sent a while ago but things take a long time to get here. I realized I never posted my address, so here it is if you want to know:

Andrea Smith (Entertainment: Musician)
Galaxy
P.O. Box 019031
Miami, FL 33101-9031 USA

Another bonus this cruise – I actually know someone on board from home!! One of my former Spanish teachers from APU, June Hamlow, is here with her entire family. It’s the first I’ve seen of anyone from home since I’ve been here. And for anyone who’s counting, that’s just over two months. Hard to believe that two months have already gone by! (Four more to go – but again, who’s counting??) ☺ Anyway, I hope to work things out to spend a bit of time with Mrs. Hamlow, she is a wonderful lady. It was actually a bit providential that I ran into her - I knew there was a chance she would be on board at some point during the summer, but I hadn’t had contact with her and didn’t know if/when she was coming. But, it just so happened that during the guest emergency drill (the first thing we do each cruise once everyone’s onboard), she happened to be assigned to the meeting point that I help monitor. We were so surprised to turn around and see each other! I can’t wait to tell her about the Spanish church that I’ve found here – especially the fact that they sing two songs that I already knew because I learned them in her class.

Each cruise we have two drills – one for guests and certain crew members who assist guests in evacuation (including me), and one for crew only. Today was the crew boat drill, which for us means a lot of standing around and waiting. Really all we do is go to our “muster station”, wait there for 15 minutes or so until we are told to go to our lifeboat station out on deck, and then wait there for 20 minutes until the drill is over. And today the drill lasted longer than normal because they decided to practice lowering all the lifeboats to the water (not with us in them – just the pilots). It is quite hot today, and we stand out on deck, so I was very glad when it finally ended. Our cruise director has a tradition with the drills: when he is making the announcement that the drill is over he always pauses a really long time before finishing the sentence that gives us our freedom: “The drill for the crew…………(unbearably long pause)…………..is now complete.” It always makes us laugh, and all the crew says the last part with him - we have basically the whole speech memorized since it’s exactly the same every time.