Hello Pittsburgh!

So I'm back in the burgh now, and I know, I'm way behind on my Blogs... I swear I will upload them soon, I'm so exhausted from the cruise and I've been busy (yet again) out the Wazzoo! I will get it uploaded ASAP! and trust me when I say Blog #11 will be awesome, so much to discuss!

GOOD TO BE BACK!

Cruise Journal 10

Cruise Journal 10: 12/13/07

Anyway, now it’s time to move on to talk about my second dive trip. It was so rewarding, probably the first dive I’ve done that I can say without a doubt that I performed masterfully! Absolutely everything went off without a hitch. I was perfectly buoyant underwater, entirely under control. There was beautiful coral and we saw five eels, four spotted and a huge black eel. (If you’re reading this Bill, don’t laugh, I know it’s a wonderful sexual innuendo.)

The second dive wasn’t quite as good. I had trouble equalizing on the way down and to prevent the explosion of an ear drum or two I had to resurface. I spent my time doing a tad bit of snorkeling on the surface and lying out in the sun. It wasn’t too bad actually; a bit of relaxation was good… however a bit of underwater fun would have been better still.

After the dives there really wasn’t much going on. I played a bit more Guitar Hero and hung out with the same crowd. I can hardly remember the 12^th; I was practically unconscious because of the decompression and just plain tiredness. I just remember going to bed fairly early in comparison, like, 1:00am.

The 13^th was much more interesting, we dove at two amazing wrecks with great history and I stayed up with sprinkles until around 6:00am. I will write all about it in my next blog (of course). To all of you; be safe and have some fun, I’ll be back late Saturday night and ready to hang out again Sunday. Although when I get back I doubt that I’ll be blogging every day anymore, but I still want to keep it up! Missing, loving, see you soon, all that good stuff!

Cruise Journal 9

Cruise Journal 9: 12/13/07

I’m getting a little behind on my journaling; things just don’t slow down for me on this ship. Although, that’s the only way I can have fun since I’ve always found relaxation boring on a vacation. Anyway, I will start writing where I left off, which is two nights ago on the 11^th.

Well, the Guitar Hero contest that I mentioned before didn’t fly. We hooked it up to the big screen but there was no contest, the timing was off by over 130ms so there was almost no way to play on it. We had our own contest downstairs afterwards, which worked a lot better. I would have won too, if not for a new player.

I finally don’t feel alone anymore; the only other “white” kid on the cruise showed up… and schooled me in Guitar Hero. Anyway the new guy goes by the name of Sprinkles, and is pretty much as geek as myself. We pretty much just hang out and play Guitar Hero or Final Fantasy in the teen lounge. We’re up to the Demon Wall, but we’ve both insisted to beat the first wall before we move on. (Brittani will know what I’m talking about; I don’t think anyone else reading this that I know of has played FF12 enough to know… I wonder how far you’re at, hope you’re having fun.) It’s a little bit weird not saving at all, we just have to leave the PS2 on and hope nobody screws with our game.

Anyway, I spent the entire night hanging out with Sprinkles, Tina, Bria and these three teens who only speak Spanish, I don’t even know their names (probably because I just don’t remember.) But it was a very amusing time staying up until 3:00am trying to break the language barrier! It was a very strange night, to say the least.

As a quick preview, on the 12^th I went on a spectacular dive and had yet another crazy night. I’ll have to write about that at some point later. I have my third dive excursion today and I couldn’t be more exciting, Aruba and all. Talk to y’all later! I’d say I miss you guys, but I think its getting a little bit repetitive after the 9^th journal. However I will definitely mention how much I miss Brittani.

PS: sorry for the lack of journals

I have been busy out the wazzoo on this trip, so I apologize if I can't upload blogs at regular intervals... I know its been at least a day or more between journals 6 and 7... I just can hardly find time to write them, ever since I got addicted to Guitar Hero and with all the SCUBA. I promise I will still do the journals, I just may have to upload them in spurts.

Love you all!

Cruise Journal 8

Cruise journal 8: 12/11/07

So… my first set of dives was today and they make me want to be a merman. Whenever I was above water this morning things just went awry, but the dives themselves were spectacular! Anyway, it’s now 5:15pm so I have a whole day to write about. Let’s get started.

The SCUBA excursion went swimmingly, pun intended, although, the boats were very badly organized. We were picked up from a little dock by the cruise ship by a fully equipped dive boat. However, instead of going to our dives we had to head back to the dive shop to get rental equipment for people like me, who don’t want to carry around their own giant BCDs (the jackets) and Regulators (the tubes/gauges). The dive shop doesn’t have its own dock; normally the boat pulls up right to the beach because there’s a sudden drop-off of where the beach goes from about 1 foot deep to 3 feet. However the swells were too rough and the boat was being knocked against the sand so we had to anchor a little further out. This meant wading through 3ft deep waters to get to the dive shop, which wouldn’t be so bad if I’d remembered to take my shorts off (bathing suit underneath) before getting off the boat…. But I didn’t, so I jumped in and got my shorts and half of my shirt soaked. Not only that, but the tide was bringing in a lot of dead coral, which is actually fairly sharp, especially when propelled into someone’s leg by a wave.

Needless to say, the start of the day wasn’t leaving me with high hopes for the dives to come. Luckily, you don’t have to be a good sailor in order to be a good diver, and our instructors were fabulous. Everything from the initial briefing to the finding of reclusive eels went very well when conducted by our “underwater tour guides.” They took our group of 9 divers all over the 2 dive sites like pros… which they were… so that’s good.

The first dive was a reef wall at a maximum depth of 60ft. The coral was beautiful and the dive instructor was able to handle the wildlife, in other words; he could pick up and play with the spider-crabs, coral and other underwater intricacies. There was this living coral that we all got to hold that would latch on to your hand and you could turn it upside down, it felt really weird, like a grandpa who’s trying to chew your hand without his teeth.

The second dive was spectacular, the best wreck dive I’ve been on yet by far. It was 50ft deep, although I probably could have gotten 51ft with a shovel… Anyway, it was the wreck of an old freighter with the hull blown straight open. There was this awesome broken-down crane still attached and we could swim into the hull. Inside there was a small air pocket at the aft of the ship that, although filled with carbon dioxide, still was about 1.5ft of “air” at about 40ft underwater.

We snapped some great pictures of both dives; I’ll make sure to upload them if we ever get the camera back. See, we (my dad and I) accidentally left the camera inside the rental BCD pocket and now it’s in Granada and we’re on a cruise ship that has set sail. I assume the dive shop will find it and mail it back to us; at least that’s what the cruise employees tell us.

We got back on the cruise ship at about 1:00pm, but this blog is already a page long so I think I’ll leave off for now. You’ll have to wait for Journal 9 to hear the rest of this afternoon… and probably tonight too. We’re set to have a Guitar Hero contest on a giant screen, so it should be fairly interesting. I miss you all! I love you Brittani! Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

Cruise Journal 7

Cruise Journal 7: 12/10/07

So I’m sitting up in the teen lounge yet again. It’s 10:00pm now and it’s been nonstop fun since 7 when I got up here. Lets see, there’s been at least an hour of playing air hockey with Isaac, I always kick his ass in it because he overextends his arm and leaves the goal way open… I may suck, but I know how to hit the broad side of a barn! After the air hockey we switched to Guitar Hero, in which he kicked my ass royally. Although I won my pride back when we played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which is probably the only video game I’d call myself a “pro” in.

Yeah, you get the basic idea here, video game competition galore. Not only that, but at 9:00pm they opened up the arcade for free to us teens for an hour. I spent the entire hour playing House of the Dead 4… It was fun, nobody else wanted to play with me so I picked up both player 1’s and player 2’s guns and went Rambo on those zombies! I ended up beating the game, although I probably would have spend a fortune in quarters if it wasn’t free.

Now I’m sitting in the teen lounge, as I said, relaxing my arms. All that trigger-pulling really takes it out of you! There’s some crappy Spanish rap playing so I think I’ll go ahead and plug in my Ipod after this to play some music I like. Anyway, adios for now, I’m missing you so I’ll make sure to drink some extra Shirley Temples for you!

Cruise Journal 6

Cruise Journal 6: 10/12/07

It’s about 5:15pm right now; we were all just kicked out of the teen lounge because it closes from five to seven. I should probably do a quick recap before moving on though; I left off last journal with watching the fifth Harry Potter movie. After the movie we all pretty much just hung out and played spoons, a fast-paced card game. I met up with my dad again at 1:00am to walk around the lower part of the boat, now I’ve pretty much walked every part of this 1000 foot cruise ship.

Anyway, today I slept late again and woke up at about 11:00am. I really didn’t feel like getting up so I turned on the TV and watched that Click movie, which is alright but not really fantastic. After a relaxing lunch with the folks I went (yep, you guessed it) back up to the teen lounge. I played some video games with this guy named Wilfred who I met the night before, it’s a little bit weird though because he only speaks a little English and I only speak a little Spanish. Oh, have I mentioned that they have Final Fantasy 12 in the teen lounge? It would be great, except that they don’t have any memory cards so the game just sits in its box and taunts me! (I hope you’re having fun playing FF12 by the way, Brittani. You were always better at that then me at it. I wonder how far you and BJ are…)

After some gaming some of the guys started up an air hockey tournament, in which I lost badly. We then had a Foosball tournament… which I also lost in. Somewhere along the line we also had a scavenger hunt which turned out quite hilariously. We lost in a tortoise and hair manner, me and Wilfred got finished first and stopped to get some ice cream in celebration, as we ate the other team finished and won. (Yeah, we felt real smart!)

Now, as I said, I’m sitting in our little room watching Click again, because it’s been playing repetitively all day. Although I got this little sticker on my cruise-card that lets me get free soda, including Shirley Temples. Good stuff! I’ve said it before, but I’ll go ahead and mention it again, its times like these, when I’m not busy, that I really begin to miss all of you back home. By the way, Brittani, you’re a big hit with the guys up in the teen lounge, apparently you’re even hotter to Puerto Ricans then you are to us Americans!

Cruise Journal 5

Cruise Journal 5: 12/9/07

Its only 9:00pm but I’m already back from the teen lounge. Everything is already starting to get old; it’s amazing how fast you can loose interest in a cruise ship. Pretty much only the two girls and Isaac speak English in the teen center, and since all the girls talk about are the “hot” Puerto Rican boys and Isaac isn’t actually that interesting (I mean the other Isaac; I’m amazing). Hence why I’m back in my room watching that RV movie with Robin Williams starring.

Anyway, this morning was a lot more relaxing then how tonight is turning out. I woke up at about 11:00am and grabbed some breakfast with my parents. After eating we disembarked onto St. Thomas, which is a small US territory… somewhere. We took a tram-thing up to the top of a high mountain that overlooked our cruise ship and the beach that we were headed towards and then continued down to that beach to relax for a while.

What amazes me continuously about cruises is the strange phenomenon that everybody gets nice, automatically it seems. You can talk to anybody! My parents and I spent at least a half-hour talking to a random couple we ran into (quite literally) while swimming in the ocean. Another amazing thing is how people drive! I took a picture of how close the tram was to the side of the road at some points, I swear there wasn’t more than an inch between us and the parked cars on the side of the road!

About pictures; internet costs a lot here, and there really isn’t enough time to upload the photos. Unless I can find a faster way then I will have to wait until I get home to show all of you how everything looks. Email me if you have suggestions, I should have enough time to check short Emails while on this cruise.

Anyway, at about the second paragraph I decided to walk back up to the teen lounge. While I’m writing right now we are all watching the 5^th Harry Potter movie on a big screen. Right now there are 4 other guys in the room, and they all speak Spanish, which is making for an uncomfortable atmosphere at least. Trust me when I say that Spanish class doesn’t prepare you for this at all! We were supposed to do some sort of girls vs. boys trivia game, but there are only boys up here. In fact, there are pretty much only those two girls I mentioned before on this entire cruise.

Well, I don’t want this blog getting too long, so I think I’ll go ahead and hit the road now. Oh, lastly, I am not uploading these blogs when the website says I am, I just have no idea how to change what time zone blogger things I’m in.

I miss all of you, especially Brittani. The only thing I can do is make sure to have some extra fun for all of you and keep on blogging the experience!

Cruise Journal 4

Cruise Journal 4: 12/9/07

I have a quick half-hour before the Teen activities start up again to write in my journal. By the way, it’s now the 9^th and the ship has long set sail. I should probably start where I left off, last night. The drill was boring, although there were for grown men who came in wearing cheesy wizards hats. I pretty much lounged around until the teen center started up its activities at 10:00pm. It was actually fairly fun, there are 72 teens on this ship but only about 10 of us are in the teen lounge at any given time. Most of the teens are Puerto Ricans, and they just wander the ship in gangs that I can only describe as classic, old-time greaser gangs (that’s right, slicked back hair and everything).

Anyway, I pretty much spent the night up in the teen lounge watching the movie “License to Wed” and playing Guitar Hero (which I suck at, by the way). There are a few cool guys up there who I hung out with. I also met these two girls who I thought were alright; accept that they keep scrutinizing every guy within 5 years of their age who walks by… (Hey bill; both of those girls are 14 and 15, perfect for your “pedophile-ish” ways.) Coincidentally enough, I mostly hang out with a kid I met also named Isaac who pretty much shares my love of specific video games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the like.

After the teen lounge closed at 1:00am I met up with my dad to wander the ship and go to a buffet that opens from midnight until 2:00am for those of us who want a quick sandwich late at night. We went to a couple really high places on the ship where, no kidding, you had to tilt your body 45 degrees or more into the wind just to keep balance. It was awesome looking over the bow of the boat at the churning waters below while we were literally pushed in different directions by the wind.

I would begin blogging about today’s happenings but it’s nearing time to head up to the Teen lounge for another round of fun. I look forward to chronicling more events for y’all at a later date. By the way, if you’re reading this Brittani, I miss you!

Cruise Journal 3

Cruise Journal 3: 12/8/07

I don’t have too long, so this will be short. More like an extension to my previous blog about today then a new blog. It’s about 7:30pm here now, just got back from a fabulous dinner. We were seated with two other great families, no kids but fun adults to talk too. Within a few minutes we were trading stories faster then we traded dinners (we were passing around each other’s plates to sample what we all got).

Next, at 8:00pm, my family and I have to run through the emergency drill with all the other 3000 people, which should take up about an hour or so of boring (but safe) time. After that I’ll probably be uploading these journals and then hanging out somewhere until 10:00pm when the teen activities start. Hopefully it will all go swimmingly.

PS: I forgot to mention it before, but Puerto Rico is very ‘cartoony.’ If there were any more colors or cheesy pictures of hula girls I might go blind.

PPS: You’ll probably read it from all of my blogs over this trip, but I just wanted to, yet again, mention my loneliness caused by the lack of a cell phone (that causes my inability to speak with not only my Girlfriend but my friends also).

Cruise Journal 2

Cruise Journal 2

12/8/07

My first thought as I write this new journal is about Brittani. Not to make this too romantic but I miss her a lot right now. I can’t help but think that, if I were back in Pittsburgh right now I would probably be with her. Anyway, it’s a cloudy Saturday here in San Juan, Puerto Rico at 4:50pm. I am sitting on my laptop in room 722 which, in diameter, probably matches my room at most. For those of you who know my room, you know it’s fairly large, but then again this room is supposed to be a mini-sweet.

The room doesn’t matter much, it’s not like I’ll be spending any of my waking hours sitting in a dull room when there’s so much to do and explore on this ship! So far I’ve just been to the teen lounge and I’m already impressed. I’m also happy that there’s the possibility of internet, even if it’s 75 cents an hour, because I can upload my blogs each night. For my friends keeping up with me by reading these, I doubt I’ll be on Google chat or AIM at all considering the price per minute.

Anyway, this morning I woke up at about 11:00am, nice and late. I spent the morning on my laptop until my parents got home at noon, when we went out to grab overpriced hamburgers for lunch. We ate, relaxed and did a little shopping until two, when we got in line to get on the cruise. I’m not kidding when I say there were six lines we had to wait through just to get on the boat. It took us from two until four just to step aboard. I probably have a lot more to do tonight, but the teen activities don’t begin until 11:00pm tonight and I assume they’ll last for the rest of the night. In fact, I’ll probably upload this just before we start because the teen lounge has my internet access.

I don’t really know what else to write, I’ll probably hop on my laptop and type up the “rest” of this blog after all the events unfold tonight, so you can expect something more exciting tomorrow! I send my love to all my friends back in the burgh, try to have some fun without me and definitely keep checking this blog!

PS: Puerto Rican restaurants don’t care about that whole “rare meat carries lots of bacteria” thing; I ordered a medium rare hamburger and got steak tartar on a bun!

Cruise, day 12/7/07

This morning I awoke at five, in other words, it started badly. I stumbled out of bed and hopped into my normal morning shower routine. The morning began to perk up though, with a call from Brittani, my girlfriend. We would talk a few times, dreading the days to come when I would be stranded without phone service (and without my cell for that matter). Finally she had to go to school, and I had to finish packing, so we said our goodbyes.

The airport was nothing special, although I did get to see our plane deiced. Deicing is done by these guys in personal cranes that look very much like the turrets on Star Wars (episode 2) landing vehicles for the clone army. That’s a fun job! Shooting high-powered cannons filled with some extinguisher-looking liquid all day!

The first flight took us to Charlotte, North Carolina where we switched to our second, longer flight to Puerto Rico. I listened to Techno and Alternative music the entire way there, for some reason I really want to start busting a move, probably “the robot,” whenever I fly. Before I get off the subject, I just want to mention that it’s absolutely beautiful if you look out the window of a plane as it soars through the clouds on a decent, its like you’re traveling through a wispy, soft barrier back to earth with the ocean and coast just barely in view through the pillow like clouds. Anyway, the plane landed without delay and we were taxied to our hotel.

This Sheraton that I’m sitting in now is wonderful. We got a very nice room, with a separated lounge and bedroom (which means I can stay up all night whilst my parents sleep!). I think we get a free movie or something off of the On Demand in the room too, but I’ll have to find that out later. Anyway, we dropped our stuff off in the room and almost immediately left to go grab some dinner. Dinner was fabulous; we went to a little Puerto Rican restaurant to get some authentic food. I don’t even really know what I ate, some sort of red meat, but it was very good!

Now I’m sitting back in our hotel room, trying to figure out how this damned television works and talking on Google chat with Bill, Jamie and Marika. I wish that I could call Brittani more then anything, but I guess that’s not possible, so I’ll continue to Email her and look forward nine days in the future when I will get to see her again. I have some pictures that I took today, just a few, but I will upload them anyway for your viewing pleasure.

I don't know if I will have any internet connection on the cruise, but I will upload all of my blogs when I finally am reconnected with my beloved World Wide Web!