Letter 3 – I could write a book about waiting

I got back this afternoon, wondering if I’d have another roommate, I did. The best so far! A South African girl from Cape Town AND she speaks English (bonus!). She is my third roommate I’ve had since I got here! I know the point of travelling is meeting interesting people from different places, but after being here a few days it’s so nice to be able to chat to someone from a similar background.

I say this as last night the phone rang. I was dead asleep and didn’t know what was going on. Then the voice on the end of the line says “You have a grroommaate” – what – “a grrooommate” OH a roommate. “She’s on the way up”. Huh?! It was 12:45am! My stuff was strewn all across the room, case open on the spare bed with piles of things around it. Oh dear. Very quickly, out of bed, bag off bed, stuff into bag etc. All while I’m half asleep and wondering if this is real or not. A few minutes later, in came my new roommate. A Russian girl who couldn’t speak much English. She’d just flown in from Russia and was exhausted. I can’t even remember her name and wouldn’t recognise her if I saw her again. She left before I got up this morning. I’ve been struggling to find the stuff I hastily put away all day.

So, more about my time in Miami. I landed on Tuesday afternoon. Getting to the airport was a bit of a mission at the London end, but luckily I have a fabulous cousin called Louise who helped me on to the tube. The flight was pleasant, I had a window and isle seat to myself, so could put my feet up and partially lie flat (head on seat, legs up side of plane by window). Once I landed I thought great, I can be in the hotel in an hour and maybe take a walk around the area, get some fresh air. Not so. It took an hour to get through passport control. Then at passport control the official said “you haven’t done this before have you?” – “Yes, I’ve been to America before” – “No I mean work on a cruise ship thing. You’re going to be here for a long time still. Go wait over there for someone to collect your passport then follow them.” At least I’d had some warning. I followed official man number 2 into a room filled with about 30-40 people, all waiting for their name to be called. I waited in that room for 1h30mins then my name was called and I could go. They were checking my contract was authentic.

When I finally got to my hotel – The Comfort Inn – I was told I there was someone already in my room. My first roommate. Her name was Gay, a Filipino girl who worked as a sales assistant or something. I was pleased to note that she had MORE luggage than me. It made me feel a lot better. When I asked her about it she said “I’m such a girl, I can’t pack light”. Same for me! All roommates are Carnival employees. I suppose I can’t expect to have an en suite room with two double beds all to myself for 5 nights. Although, roommates 2 and 3 did come as a surprise as roommate 1 left her room key in the room. I thought this meant she never checked out and the hotel thought she was still here. I guess not.

As my contract stated I had to be in Miami on 16 June, I thought this meant I would sign onto my ship on the 16th June. Before you sign on, your name has to appear on the Carnival notice board and mine did not appear for sign on on the 16th. When I asked the front desk about this they said if your name does not appear, just wait for the next list which would come at 7pm the following day. Fantastic, I had a whole day in Miami to myself and decided I should see some of the city. I did a city tour with Oscar (my tour guide). I was the only one on the tour. He drove me through the residential areas of Little Havana, Coral Gables (a separate city within the city of Miami) and Coconut Grove before stopping in South Beach/Miami Beach. I took a quick walk on the beach – so long, white, wide and flat – felt the water (VERY warm), then got back into the van and got taken to Bayside. At Bayside I did a boat tour and saw the port of Miami, the Miami skyline, Fisher Island (the most exclusive island to live on – it can only be accessed by helicopter or boat), Millionaire’s Row (you have to be a millionaire to live there) and Star Island (you have to be a celebrity to live there). There were amazingly huge and over the top houses on these islands!

After my tour I headed back to the hotel and packed up my bags as I was pretty sure I would be leaving the next day. When I went down to check the list, there was no list. By 10pm still no list. I kept asking the front desk about it and they said they’d tried calling Carnival but there was no answer and nothing more they could do. Again they said if my name was not on the list I would not be signing on to my ship. I even woke up early the next morning to see if the list was up, but no such luck. I phoned Carnival later that day and they said I was supposed to be signing on that day. But I had missed the bus so I would have to wait and sign on the next time the ship was in America. Sunday. More waiting! Luckily I met another girl, Landé, who was also supposed to board that day to start photo training but had also missed the boat and been told the same story by the hotel front desk.

Landé and I did some shopping together at the Dolphin Mall and then planned a night out on the town. This is when we met my roommate number 3. She joined us for our night out. It was great fun. We tried to find a club to go dancing, but never found what we were looking for. Well we did find one club that was very popular; we were even given VIP passes for this club – Mansion. Unfortunately the passes only let you skip the queue. Once inside the entrance was $25! Quite steep, so we just walked straight out again. The evening turned into more of a pub crawl and we finally got home at 3am.

There is so much more to tell about my time waiting in Miami. For instance the shower, I couldn’t work out how to make the water hot! There was only one tap to turn. After a rather cold start to my first shower I figured it out. Only once the volume of water coming out of the shower head was on full would the temperature kick in. The more you turned the tap on, the hotter it got. Cleaver.

Must be off now. More to follow at some stage. xxx