First Day!

Not even has a week gone by and yet I feel like I have experienced a month’s worth of adventure.  This blog was started with the intent of recording every moment of shipboard life, of being a ‘water librarian’ - as coined by a passenger this morning -- but that’s not looking very likely. My day is extremely full, opening the library doors (metaphorically, the library venue is open 24 hours but books/games/etc. are locked before/after specified times) at 8 am but arriving at my desk 15 minutes earlier to prepare the daily quiz/sudoku and opening the metal gates that encase the books at night,  and closing the place at 10 pm. Don’t worry, I am recording things, moments, incidents and observations in a print journal. But I may fail to transfer those to the blog. So please feel free to ask questions about what it is like to live on a cruise ship, work on a cruise ship, work as a cruise ship librarian, and that may prompt a post.

Because this is a week later I shall skip the hours that preceded embarkation besides saying that thank goodness Z_____ flew me out to the port city the day prior. Between buses to airports and flights with stops, I traveled a good 12 hours, and arrived sleep-deprived and in desperate need of a shower. Due to coincidence my father was also in town for a convention so he picked me up from the airport and we checked in first to my hotel, reserved by the cruise line, and then to his, where I would actually stay (better location for downtown exploration.) Stress, travel and lack of sleep played havoc on my immune system tho, leaving me feverish, sneezing, and with a hoarse throat/voice – the very way you hope not to feel with a new job. Morning of the new job I was feeling a tad better internally but externally was a bit of a mess.

Z_____ never actually told me when I needed to arrive to the port, besides the date. With no idea of what time I was required to show up (did I need to be there at 7 am, or would 3 pm suffice?) I parted with my father at 10 am, passing through security at the San Diego port and stepped onboard.

A sheer whirlwind of activity quickly followed. The HR director was summoned. His wife, who had moonlighted as the librarian for the past 2 weeks due to the previous librarian moving to a different ship, and who would be training me in my position was also alerted. She, (“Y”) took me to my room; a remarkably small room, that I was sharing with one of the Youth Services staff. The previous co-occupant, sister to her roommate, was still in the process of packing so we left my bags there and proceeded through the ship.

“Port and left have four letters. That’s an easy way to remember the two.” “Never take the passenger elevators. You can take the crew elevators in the crew area, and either crew or passenger stairs.” “Passengers have lifeboats. Crew, liferafts.” “You eat at the Lido restaurant on either side for breakfast and lunch but only on the port side for dinner.” It was soon 11 am. Y led me to the library, to open it for the new cruise.

First impressions: the library was lovely. The venue fits the ship well, and is centrally located, both vertically and horizontally. As I had noticed with all the other floors and spaces, the cruise manages to form rooms and nooks and cranneys in its rather open floor plan. You see everything but also feel like you’re distinctively in the casino, or the Explorer’s Lounge, or anything other place. I suppose I am not describing it well. One is definitively in the library, but from my desk I see the café, can hear morning church services from the neighboring conference room, and later in the day, the bells and whistles of the casino. The library is three ‘rooms’ that spaciously flow into one another. The front ‘room’ is where my desk is, large comfy chairs angled to look out the windows, the cases of games, majority of the library computers available to guests for Internet access, and shelves of “Leisure”, “Travel” and “Best Sellers.” The second room is the puzzle room, and shelves of “Large Print”, “Foreign Language” and Fiction…and is in serious need of additional light. The back features a chess set, a few more computers and desk areas, “History”, “Science”, “Classics” and “Reference”. Also in the back room is a framed photo of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the ship’s godmothers, who christened the ship on its first voyage.

That first day, despite being only a ‘half day’ due to guests not arriving until noontime, was long and hard. The passengers swarmed the library, trying to get the new and popular books first. A 2 book checkout policy was in place in anticipation of that. They all had internet questions (how do I log on? How much is the internet plan?), and were redirected to G, the Internet Manager, who sits next to me but whose desk positions his back to inquiring guests and thus makes him seem far less accessible than the Librarian. When we took our dinner break Y led me up to the 8 floor Lido. My father texted me that he was standing on the port watching the ship pull away, and I could faintly tell his figure from the distance. The ship pulled away and every so soon the lights of SD disappeared.

After the library closed, 10 pm, I took a seasickness pill before retiring to bed, the waves inciting one of the few instances of seasickness I have ever had. I had hoped to celebrate my departure with a beer in the OB (Officer’s Bar) but instead, tired, flu-sick and water-offbalanced, I crawled into my top bunk and promptly fell asleep.

‘Twas my first day… more coming soon.