Spreading Holiday Cheer in Cozumel . . .

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The last couple weeks have been hectic, emotional and tiring. It was my third week on the Dream when I got the news from home that my Grandpa Hedley had passed away. A lot of chaos ensued, but I managed to get home to be with my family for the funeral. I had a week at home then to rest, see family and get my head wrapped back around work. Two days ago, I flew back to Florida and rejoined the Dream. Luckily, it was quiet for the week and a bit that I was off the ship and because I have a co-director (Kristina), I wasn’t really needed at work. However, the holidays are fast approaching which means more families onboard and more work for us!

Every year the cruise line sponsors different groups for various charities. At the holiday time, each ship is sent gifts to give to an organization in one of our ports of call. Volunteers from the crew sign up to go out to the organizations to represent the company and crew while the gifts are passed out.

Today in Cozumel, about 30 members of the Dream Team headed out together to a centre for special needs children near the cruise terminal.

A big group of young children and their parents – mostly moms – were gathered in one of the large rooms waiting for us. First, Babu, our “table artist” (magician) did a little magic show for the kids. Then our Santa arrived and began handing out the gifts. There were a lot of children, so this took quite awhile. But as the children received their gifts, we crew spread out amongst them to help them open the packaging and then played with them. I joined up with two boys, one who received a Mickey Mouse puzzle. We spent the next half hour seated on the floor working at the puzzle. I have enough functional Spanish to get by when travelling, but I realized just how useless that it to try to talk to kids! And they didn’t speak any English, but thankfully for puzzle making, nods and thumbs up were all that were needed. The kids were all so cute – some were only teeny tiny babies just weeks old! Nice to see their smiles.

After we left the centre, a group of us had some lunch in one of the restaurants on the pier. We were freezing! Now I know it’s not actually freezing compared to the weather back home, but when you’re out in just shorts and t-shirts expecting warm weather and then it’s overcast with a really strong wind whipping off the ocean . . . it feels freezing. We didn’t last long before we were rushing back to have hot showers back onboard!

A lot more holiday events and blogs are sure to follow in the next few weeks!

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