A great first month of the year!

(PHOTOS are up!! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2103059&id=56903845&l=6f3b4560a9

and http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2103057&id=56903845&l=28e4ab4323)

I have had a truly incredible couple of weeks, and I apologize to my faithful readers (Mom) :-) for not posting. I'm afraid this is going to be one of those "look at how amazing my life is" posts....sorry if it comes across that way!! But I really have been so blessed over the past weeks. First of all, friends are the biggest blessing in my life at the moment. I can't tell you what a different place a ship becomes when you have those go-to people you are really comfortable with, who are always ready to go do something with you or make something happen. All week after work I've been meeting up with friends to hang out, play some fun and silly card game or board game, and relax. I LOVE that. I love people that are up for that. So thanks, God, for some cool friends!! (And a shout-out to Tati, Mike, Jason, Deedee, Juan, Vero, Dave, Cat, Jasmine, and others!!)

Last week I had a really special opportunity to go on a dolphin swim in Cozumel with some other staff from the ship. A dolphin sanctuary called Dolphinaris wanted to promote its program to the Youth staff on the ship who could in turn promote it to guests and their families, so they gave about 10 of us a VIP experience to help them advertise. Lucky for me, I have friends on youth and sports staff who invited me. It was absolutely incredible, I must say a much better overall experience than I had when I tried swimming with dolphins in Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas. We had a lot more time with the animals and it was much more interactive. There was a period where the dolphins were just swimming all around us; they kept scaring us, in fact, when we didn't see them coming. We were surrounded by them as they swam in between us. There was even a little baby dolphin in the group we played with. We also got to do the belly ride where you hang on to the dolphin's fins and let it carry you across the pool. It was such an incredible, magical experience, and the best part about it was that they really treated us like VIP's - everything was free for us, including the swim, transportation, lockers, towels, drinks and lunch - anything we wanted from their restaurant menu. We also got the photos and a DVD they made of us for free (that's where dolphin swim companies usually always get you....ha ha). It was really unbelievable. So a big shout-out to Dolphinaris - I had an awesome time and will do my part in advertising for them out here on the world wide web. :-)

This week in Cozumel I had another incredible day - my friends and I rented a jeep and drove all over the island. A couple of the guys rented scooters and drove along behind us too. We had a great lunch at a restaurant by the beach, explored the coast, and just had fun driving around and feeling like normal people. My friend Tati and I ate breakfast at a local food market, which was a really neat experience. I love doing things that are really cultural and local, and that qualified. Also, its fun to use my Spanish, which is improving every day hanging out with Tati and being in Mexico.

Our Argentine tenor sax player Julian gave me $2 bill a week ago, claiming that it had brought him bad luck, but if he gave it away he thought it would bring both of us luck. He instructed me to give it away again once some luck found me. I believe that day has come. A big crew bingo game happens once a month here on board, and the final jackpot game is always the big attraction. If no-one wins it after 50 numbers are called, it rolls over and keeps accumulating a bigger jackpot. This month's Bingo game was the talk of the ship, because they promised to give away the jackpot no matter what - just keep calling numbers until someone won. As a result there was a huge turnout for the big game, hundreds of crew showed up to play. Now, I'm not really a gambler, and I've never participated in one of these games before, it always costs $10 or so to enter. But this week Tati and some more of my friends talked me into joining them - we made a deal that we would all go together, each buy a card, and then promise to split any money we won, and split the jackpot if any of us won it. We won none of the preliminary games, but unbelievably one of our cards won the final Jackpot round!!! We split the $2300 prize 8 ways, and still each came away with almost $300 each!! It was so crazy, and so much fun - each time one of us was getting close we'd tell the others and say what we needed, so it really felt like a team effort. We knew we only needed B-8 for our card to win, and we were chanting it....and we all erupted when it got called!!! None of us believed we could really win it and we were in shock all night....and had a big celebration, of course. B-8 is now our call number, if we pass each other on the ship we'll point and say "B-8!!!! Woohoo!!" Winning that game with a bunch of my friends was such an amazing moment. To celebrate, Tati and I are going on a guilt-free shopping spree tomorrow to the mall in Galveston......and true to my word I'll now be passing that lucky $2 bill on to someone else.