Lifeboat Capacity: 150 people

So I am finally off the night shift. But the day coming off of the night shift was something in itself. Since it is winter, and there are a lot of storms in the Mediterranean right now, we had to miss a port this cruise. There was a really big storm as we were supposed to come into Civitavecchia (the port for Rome), so we had to delay coming into port until around 6:00 pm, when we were supposed to arrive at 7:00 am. We have a new captain onboard this cruise however, so at least he came up with some solutions instead of just missing the port altogether.

We ended up having an overnight in Civitavecchia which ran into the next day. This also meant that we would have to miss Mykonos, Greece, but given the weather, we probably would have missed it anyway.

The night before we arrived to Rome was supposed to be my last night shift, so I was excited when I found out that we would have the overnight, since I would be able to get off the ship then. No such luck. They changed the schedule, so I had to work an extra night. So everyone else got to enjoy the night out but me. We always have a boat drill for the crew in Civitavecchia because all the guests get off the ship early, and we won't disturb them too much. Of course, this happens around 9:30am, so I hadn't slept yet. There are two parts to the drill. The first part we have emergency duties, and an emergency station. I have to go and check off that a bunch of crew are at their spots. Then the second part we have to go to our muster stations, where we would abandon ship if we had to. While we were at the second part, the Safety Officer comes over to my station, and says, "above you, in those two boxes, take out the lifejackets, and put them on" then we were instructed to go down to deck number 2, where we had the pleasure of filling a lifeboat.

I'm not sure what the exact purpose of filling the lifeboat was, other than to annoy crew by having them all squished together for a half an hour while they get things organzied. Hopefully it wouldn't take that long during a real emergency.

When our drill was finally over, we had a team meeting, after which I decided that I should go out for lunch to enjoy Italian pizza for one of the last times, so I didn't get to have too much of a nap before I had to be in to work for 8:00 pm, since they decided for some reason that the 8 hours you already worked that day was not enough.

Anyway, I am thankfully happily off of the night shift, and back on days. Of course, my sleeping schedule isn't fully adjusted, but hopefully soon everything will be good, and my body will stop hating me for making so many changes to my internal clock. Today I was able to go out for lunch in Santorini, Greece, which was very nice, despite a very needy cat that kept jumping in everyone's laps. Tomorrow we will be in Turkey.

Starting on my birthday, we have our new winter itinerary, which includes the Canary Islands, Sicily, Morocco, Egypt, Malta, and some others... although I'm sure having boarding day on my birthday is one of the least ways I would like to spend it, it will be nice to be able to see some new ports.