Finally, today was the day for us to go on the cruise ship. The kids were very excited; I am not sure whether it was because they were looking forward to visiting the Mayan ruins or because they were psyched about the cruise. We did our usual routine,the morning dance, the journal reporting, and then we were given some time to pack up. Almost all the suitcases have gotten"fatter" since their first arrival almost a week ago. I am not really sure where and how did these kids have gotten souvenirs when we only had about 1 hour of shopping. I suppose purchasing souvenirs without being noticed goes right up there with the ability to capture a picture moment as the two essential elements of being an Asian tourist!
We had our lunch in our classroom in Houston before departing for the port at Galveston. We lost our translator Jessica, but got many more adult chaperons. We have a new translator, Eva, who joined us from the space camp. We also got Kerry, Allen, and Mars. The organization, apparently, are worried that the kids would be tempted to re-enact the scene from Titanic and wanted to keep a close eye on them! Haha! Actually, it's in accordance to the cruise regulation; each room must have an adult. So, the students were divided into groups of 3, and there are 2 male chaperons for the 6 boys and 4 female chaperons for the remaining 12 girls. I get Penny and Arielle from KCBS, and another girl named Phoebe whom later was referred to as the "aiya" girl. I believe she gets nervous around me, especially when I speak English to her. So, whenever she sees me, she will smile and say "aiya"!
The checking-in process took a while because it was everybody's first time. Overall, it was not too bad, and we boarded the cruise ship named Carnival Ecstasy as quickly as possible. The first view of the ship was extravagant; I thought we were transformed to Las Vegas. Everything was colorful and shining! I was already dizzy before the ship even took off. Is this why the ship is called Ecstasy? We had some time to find our cabin. The cabin is quite small for four people. There are two retractable beds in the upper walls above the original lower beds. The bathroom is slightly larger than the airport lavatory. When you put 4 people, 3 suitcases that are almost the same size as the girls' there is barely any room for my tiny suitcase. So, I resorted to owning a personal space of 30cm x 30cm where I put my closed suitcase there.
After getting our suitcases and sorting out everything, we met up by the upper deck for some food. Oh, I have to dedicate a paragraph to the food~ Oh, my god! If I don't do it now, I will be talking about food all the time! There is constantly free food at anytime in a lot of different locations. There is hot food, cold cuts, fruits, desserts, ice cream, bread, cookies, and drinks. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! There is a designated restaurant for the regular meals, but at other times, you can get anything to eat/drink and it's all free. Alcohol is the only thing that one has to purchase. Considering my pathetic almost zero alcohol tolerance, I'd save a lot of money. The meals are excellent! You can order anything and everything at the restaurant,eggs made in any way you like, sausages, bacon, potatoes, all kinds of fruits, cereals, and drinks, waffles, pancakes, bread, croissant...etc. Dinner is the same, we can order different entrees each time, or order two if your stomach can store two! Yay~
We couldn't do much on the first day because we didn'?t have a classroom to have lectures and everybody was pretty distracted and/or tired after the initial "wow" and "ooo" so we planned some free time for the kids to explore around the cruise ship and to take the kids to watch the welcoming show. That was pretty nice! Dinnertime was at 8:15pm, and by the time we finished, there was some free time for the kids to burn off the calories by roaming around the ship! That was it for our 1st day on the ship!
Frankie
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