Carnival Inspiration - Nov. '10 till June '11

So....some of you may be wondering what I've been up to these last 8 months. Well, most of you know i've been working on cruise ships for the last 5 years. I spent the last 8 months working on Carnival Inspiration. Wow, that ship is A LOT of work. I challenged myself in every way, specifically profesionally as I learned how to teach Carnival College of Management and taught 8 month-long colleges. It was hard work, but as a facilitator, I learned so much. Besides that, I have met soooo many incredible people. I made some really good friends and when times weren't so peachy, they picked me up. I will miss them and leaving was bittersweeat. So, this is what i've done for the last 8 months....

First, I spent some quality time at the beach. I am such a beach bum as you can tell by my countless freckles.





Besides going to the beach, i've had a lot of fun at crew parties and polladas. What is a pollada do you say? Well technically it means 'chicken party' in spanish. In Peru, when you have a get together, you get lots of delicious food including pollo a la braza (roasted chicken), then you eat, dance and drink. Well, on the ship we don't have chicken, but we do dance and on occasion have a few drinks. Since we had to improvise, we basically took an ipod, speakers and brought them out on the crew deck and then we'd dance like maniacs.

This is the pollada that took place for my birthday:



This was a pollada for the birthday of my buddy Jhon aka Chaval:



This was a farewell party for my friends Dimas and Andres:

and some more random polladas:



Since I spent most of the contract hanging out with the Peruvian gang, it's earned me the nickname Miss Machu Picchu. When I left the ship, I did however train a protege to take care of my crazy Peruvians, that was Miss Huayna Picchu herself. Aside from polladas, there were some good crew parties too.

Here are a few photos from the pirate party:




and some of the parties would end up with deck 2 cabin after parties, my usual partner in crime TJ was always on standby:




Aside from working like a donkey, I also DJ from time to time. This time I got challegned to a battle by DJ HISTERICUS (George) and DJ DAVE BROWN (Varoon). Lucky for me, I DJ mostly Latin music so I had the Latin vote and my awesome assistant made me a MISS MACHU PICCHU sign:



This is my favourite photo of this whole contract. My friend Joe from Peru took this. It's a the DJ BATTLE party with all my supporting Peruvians:



And I spent my fair share of time at Fat Tuesday's in Cozumel. It's mostly not my fault as my good friend DJ Billy worked there and I had to stop by to say hi:



We also put together the Carnival Inspiration Oscars. There were a bunch of categories and Department Heads nominated different crew members and the whole ship voted over a period of 1 week:



I was nominated for LIFE OF THE PARTY and I had some crazy competition. Mostly my dear friend TJ and that meant WAR. He made a commercial, I made T shirts and gave away candy. Here's me shamelessly promoting myself:



The ceremony went great. We had everything the real Oscars had: red carpet, red carpet interviews, Oscar statues, the whole nine yards (the second picture on the right, that's my awesome sidekick Anja):



Me and one of my colleague presented the award for 'next team member to earn a 35 year pin:



My award was the most anticipated one, so it was presented last. The biggest competition was TJ and Arthur. So we lined up at the bottom of the carpet and we just played around and pretended to be fighting. Little did I know that a full blown out fight was about to happen WHEN I WAS AWARDED THE OSCAR FOR LIFE OF THE PARTY!!!!!! Pictures are self explanatory:

Alright, so besides DJ battles and parties and polladas and Oscars, I do manage to do things that enrich the mind a bit.



Now I know some of you may not believe me, but I also work haha. Actually, I work quite a bit, a lot more then most of you land folk out there. But as you can see, I am enjoying myself when on the job and off the job. I try to make the most of my time on the ship and off the ship. Here are some photos of me on the job:



And this was my despedida (goodbye) with a farewell pollada bailable (a dancable chicken party lol). I was accompanied by of course my Peruvian clan, Miss Huayna Picchu (my protege) and the chickens (entertainment college students) and also TJ aka Miss Taj Mahal. The pollada was also for 2 other friends who were leaving on the same date as me:






Oh, my Inspiration peeps, I MISS YOU ALL!

Now, i'm off to pack for Colombia......