Day in the life of a Hostess! :)

My Roomies!

 

Friday, May 11^th. This will be my 6^th Friday in Africa! Time is certainly going by way too fast for my liking. This Friday is different though from most, as I am on duty, wearing a pager from 8am till 8am tomorrow morning. With being the Duty Hostess, I welcome new arrivals, give tours to the new crew who arrived the day before and give out birthday cookies and cards, for crew members birthdays.

My day normally starts off around 7am, with breakfast in the dining room. Then I often go back to my room and get ready for work.

At 8am, we all meet in the hospitality office, and look at our lovely board to see what are the tasks for the day. Often this includes cabins, laundry, ironing, cookies, and making boats.

Once we have all taken a task, we all head off in our separate ways to complete our jobs. Today I am off to make a guest cabin, for a lady coming to visit her friend on the ship! First we clean the cabin, and bathroom, then we make up the new beds, and make them look pretty.. following making the beds, I put the clean set of towels in the bathroom, lastly I set up the welcome papers, and boat. Then before leaving the room, I vacuum the floor. Whoever is on duty will come by and put fresh cookie packs next to the papers, on the day of arrival.

After this I went off to make the cookie packs for the new guests and crew arriving today. There is only one crew member, and a few guests. Making the cookie packs, is somewhat exciting, and it can be cool to decide who gets what kind of cookie, haha.

It is now 10am, which translates into break time on the ship. Many people who work 8-5 slowly fill into Mid Ships, which is where the Starbucks cafe is located. On Mondays and Fridays they have crepes and waffles, today is Waffle day!

After our break time is over, we had already finished all our set tasks for the day, when Josh Callow, decided to drop into our office with some of the film festival prizes that he needed wrapped. So we tied bows, and put ribbon on them so they are ready for Saturday night red carpet event!

Once we finished the wrapping fiesta, we headed off for our hour lunch break from 11:30am-12:30pm. I dropped by the reception desk and had a nice chat with Anna, from Nova Scotia! Then continued to lunch, it again was pizzzaaa! Yumm!

When 12:30pm rolls around we all wonder back into the office for our devotions. Right now we are reading the book, call Kisses From Katie. She is a young missionary living in Uganda, and has written this book about her calling and what she is doing there!

Once devotions were over, I got to go get my PACKAGE!!!!!! My mom sent me, candy, shoes, a book, and my university letters!! I am now accepted into UNB, UPEI, Crandall, and have fully applied to Tyndale, all for psychology.

Our afternoons are somewhat less busy, as we already finished all of our work by lunch time. Because I was on duty, I am responsible for taking the new crew who arrived the day before on a ship tour!

Today I had two new crew members on the tour, both nurses, one from the UK and the other from the States. We start our tour in the cafe, and move on to the ship shop, crew bank, post office, and chaplaincy offices. After this we continue to the library, which is open 24/7 and has many varieties of books and DVDs. After the library is the hair salon, with our lovely hair stylist, Jillian, from Canada!

Next up is the prayer room, which is the only quiet place you can find alone time on the ship. Up on Deck 6, we have our Academy, which has about 50 students from all over the world, along as 12 teachers. The crew galley, is a place where people often make cakes or a special meal. The laundry room and internet cafe are also on Deck 6. The international lounge, is where we hold our weekly Monday and Thursday meetings, and our Sunday evening service. It is also home to early morning workouts, and different special events. Up onto Deck 7, we have the Queens Lounge, which actually used to be for Queen Ingrid, when the ship was the train ferry. After this part of the tour, we go up to Deck 8, which is the only fully open deck, it also has the pool. Its a spot where you can see Togo's Navy, two ships and all. Down on deck 3, is there hospital. We have 4 wards, and 6 operating theaters. We also have a CT scanner, and a x ray machine. Near the living part of deck 3, we have the crew clinic and the crew dental clinic. The last part of the tour is down to deck 2, which has the workout room and the boutique.

The other duty hostess job, is welcoming new arrivals, with a bit of information and food! Today I will only have one crew member arriving, the chief Engineer. He is from the states, and arrived on the Air France flight, once he was welcomed and fed he is free to roam around the ship and hopefully not get lost! He has been here before though!

Because I have the pager, I'm not supposed to leave the ship, but once all my work was done for today, I gave it to Elise, as she didn’t have any plans, and I went out to an Indian restaurant with a group of friends! We fit 6 people in a taxi, and Chris went on a zimmy john behind us! It was a fun evening!

That’s a work day in my life on Mercy Ships!

Photos to come later~  :)