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.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve on the ship was pretty exciting on the Royal Promenade, with a Times Square feel and thousands of balloons falling at midnight....unfortunately we were in the secondary place to celebrate, playing big band music, which apparently no one was really interested in this cruise. Studio B with its capacity of almost a thousand people was depressingly empty for the New Year's celebration, but we still had our countdown and balloon drop there. There were a lot of crew who came out to hear us instead of going to the Promenade, so it was nice to bring in the New Year with friends. After we finished playing at 1am, the party continued until the wee hours, and it was a lot of fun to be in that atmosphere.

The week itself was really busy for us, and now that the busiest cruise of the year is over, everyone can relax and settle into a routine. This week we have the Texas Tenors again, which is nice for me because I will get the night off. They have music for trombone, but apparently someone lost it somewhere and they (very unprofessionally) don't have a pdf file with their charts on it just in case. Who only owns one hard copy of their charts?? Unbelievable. This is their first cruise ship performance ever, though, so they really don't know the ropes, and to be quite honest don't really have a tight show yet. They have great voices, but they don't really have a show to go with it. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to play, but it was nice to sit back and listen. I spoke with them briefly, and apparently they will be back in February, by which time they think they'll find their trombone charts. Unbelieveable....apparently fame and professionalism don't go hand in hand. I wish them the best though - they really have the potential for a fantastic show if they work out some kinks, and get some better band arrangements that make more sense.

Today in Galveston I made a couple of great finds - I'm here in "The Mod" coffee shop (reminds me of sophomore year), with great internet, in an old brick building, with a loft that has couches and bookshelves and really makes me feel like I'm home. And the coffee is great. Had the best cappuccino I've had in a while. I also checked out an old used book store I walked by - its packed floor to ceiling with shelves of books, you can barely walk between the rows of mismatched shelves, and the apparent owner of the shop is an orange tabby cat who sits at the counter proudly sporting the name "Gus" on a shiny black collar, and greets everyone who enters with a meow and a plea for some attention. I fell in love with the place at once....and bought four books, including the Lord of the Rings in Spanish. I've been practicing the language a lot here, I have several friends from Mexico and one from Argentina (our sax player) helping a lot. I hope to be able to call myself truly fluent by the end of this year (one of many resolutions). Other goals: to practice more and focus on improv, and to stay in shape and committed to my exercise routine. So far, so good! Looking forward to a new year of travel and adventure.