First Day at Sea and First Classes

Today was our first day of being at sea, and smooth it has been too!

We awoke to the alarm on my phone at 8am, and was up in Marco’s Bistro soon after. By 9am, I’d collected the Conferece Room key from the Entertainments Office and had made a start setting up the room ready for my fiirst class. Everything was running like clockwork.

Soon after, however, a lady marched in, and I said hi. She said hello back, and I asked her if I could help her; if she was here for the watercolour class, it wasn’t due to start until 10am. No, she explained; she was here for the Christian Chat Group. I told her that there must have been a mistake; we were in the midst of setting up for the painting class due to start at 10, and gestured to the mountain of still wrapped-up boxes and packages of art materials. “Oh, but it’s in the programme”, she assured me. I assured her that there had still been a mistake, and that the chat would probably take place in the Columbus Lounge, just outside the Conference Room.

I thought the matter had been resolved as soon as the lady left, and continued to set up stuff, only to have a second, and then a third person, come into the room all expecting to engage in some Christian Chat.

Much to my disappointment, Jonathon, the Cruise Director came in some time later and confessed that the Chat Group being put in the programme for the Conference Room had been an error, and that it should have been the Card Room next door. Unfortunately, it’s harder to move card players… so we had to suspend our setting up for half an hour while the group convened (and, I suppose, chatted).

The painting class time was duly put back by half an hour, to 10:30am, and as predicted, due to a full group, we went to a second group at 12:45am, giving us about 20 minutes between groups and enough time at the end to clear away in time for Barbara, one of the other craft tutors, to come in and do her stuff at 1:30.

Doing my classes in a morning means that I get to have lunch, which was nice.It also means that I have the whole afternoon to myself. When we start to arrive at interesting places, I expect to start painting. What did I spend the whole afternoon doing today? Sleeping…

I only meant to lay my head down for 10 minutes. When I awoke, it was three hours later.

So, other than the chaos of this morning’s classes, it’s been a relatively relaxing first day. The sea has behaved itself, with only a very gentle swell (although that seems to have bothered one or two newbies). Tomorrow is another day at sea, so we’ll be doing it all again…