Spring Break

Ok, so I've heard the stories about college kids going wild for spring break, but I've never experienced it firsthand until now.   Since we sail out of Charleston, we get a ton of college students on for their spring breaks.  Last week was apparently the craziest - I've been hearing some ridiculous stories about it - there were over 1500 college kids on, out of 1800 guests.  I should have figured it out when I was waiting to get on the ship for the first time, and almost everyone coming off the ship had a shirt with greek letters on it.  Yikes. This week there are only about 1,000 and next week will be even less, but it is still nuts.  Basically they all just drink all day and night until they pass out, they are always on deck partying, crammed in the hot tubs, making TONS of noise, packing out the disco, making out in public, trying to hook up with each other constantly, etc.  

Last night the showband played a pop set for the St. Patrick's Day deck party.  It was packed, everyone was dancing and having a great time and enjoying the band, which made it pretty fun for us to play up there.  But college students + spring break + St. Patrick's Day = general mayhem.  One particularly inebriated kid liked the band and singers so much (they sang on wireless handheld mics, dancing through the crowd) that he bought all of us two rounds of drinks.  There were 15 or 20 of us, so he has to have spent a lot of money....I bet he regrets it today.  :-)

Tonight we was our only guest entertainer show of the cruise.  His name is Brett Cave, and he sings and plays piano.  He's been on the ship for weeks, and knows everyone in the band pretty well except me.  Tonight at the first show he would not stop picking on me!  For example, he has the guests sing, repeating after him, and then he came over to me and said, "Andrea! Let's hear you do it, darlin', all by yourself!" So I did....ha ha.  He kept directing comments at me the whole show and giving me a hard time.  It was pretty funny....but he is definitely getting a punch in the arm next time I see him.  This is what comes of being the new girl...and the only girl.....with goofy guest entertainers.   It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks of doing his show will go.  Maybe he'll pick on the NEW new guy next week, ha ha.  And speaking of spring break - near the end of the second show a very drunk girl came up on stage asking Brett if she could turn pages for him.  Yeah, about that...he doesn't use any music.  He was a good sport and let her sit on the bench next to him for the last song.  She kept randomly waving her arms in the air and shouting "Woo!!!  Spring Break 2009!! Woohoo!!!"  Wow.  I was embarrassed for her.  

   But don't worry everyone!  In a week this craziness will be over, and we'll be back to our usual groups of calm, older people.